The “big four” mobile operators — MTS, “Vympelcom”, “MegaFon” and “T2 RTK holding” (Tele2), and MTT have begun to develop joint efforts in combating illegal international contacts. We are talking about voice traffic that enters the telephone network through local gateways, and is charged as a local. So are calls to landline and mobile numbers from VoIP services like Skype Out, Viber Out, etc. the Operators are losing money, when instead of a standard charge for international calls ($0.14 per minute) receive payment only for the local call (less than $0,01).
Already managed to agree on is that mobile operators will pass on their networks from the networks of operators of local communication only calls from numbers that are assigned to those companies by the Federal communications Agency, specify “Vedomosti”. The operators really began to coordinate efforts to combat fraud, confirmed the representatives of “Megaphone”, “Rostelecom”, MTS and “Vympelcom”.
According to the approved state rules of accession of telecommunication networks call from abroad must first pass through the network of one of the Russian operators of the international connection (for example, Rostelecom, MTT or “TransTeleCom”), then through a fixed area network (or regional network of the cellular operator), and then terminate at a local telephone network.
There are several fraud schemes, but they all boil down to the fact that the call from abroad is not the chain of telephone networks and via the Internet channel comes on switch local connection or a special device (the gateway for the transformation of the Internet call to a regular call over the cellular network) and masquerades as a local call, explains the head of the business unit Core MTT Andrew Aghirov. Thus, for example, the mobile operator, whose subscriber receives a call, receives not $0.14 per minute of the negotiations, and 0,95 RUB: this is now the rate on interconnect for calls from fixed to mobile.
Of course, blocking the VoIP traffic occurs for the benefit of the users: “because of the joints between the Internet and telephony networks is lost the quality of communication, the called subscriber cannot see who’s calling and can call back the person”, — explained the representative of MTS Dmitry Solodovnikov.
Assessment of MTT, illegal schemes in Russia is about 40% of international telephone traffic (about 80 million minutes per month). Turnover of traffic exchanges, which through intermediaries sells to foreign operators for cheap calls to Russia is about $4 million a month. The damage to Russian telecommunications operators, according to different estimates, ranges from $115 million to more than $2 billion a year.
In 2014, amendments to the law “On communications” were trying to hold deputies Igor Lebedev, Yaroslav Nilov, Vadim Dengin, Leonid Levin, Andrey Svintsov and Vladimir Krupennikov, but the media noise about the “block Skype”, and the project was postponed, “to relieve tension”. This time the operators act more cautiously.
