Kommersant learned about the plans of Roskomnadzor and the Ministry of Digital Development to ban calls in instant messengers

The Ministry of Digital Development told the publication that it is not yet “developing regulations that limit voice traffic in instant messaging,” adding that it is “open to industry proposals.” Roskomnadzor did not respond to the newspaper’s request.

According to telecom operators, about 40% of calls via instant messengers are made by scammers, and about 70% of them come from abroad. At the same time, players in the telecommunications market point out that blocking such calls with company funds is impossible and is only within the powers of Roskomnadzor.

“Currently, prevention of fraudulent calls via instant messaging can only be done at the level of additional applications on the subscriber’s smartphone. To do this, the subscriber himself must grant these applications permission to access instant messaging on his device,” highlighted the Megafon representative. The company said operators cannot analyze the country of origin of a call in Messenger for technical reasons.

Only Roskomnadzor can solve the problem of fraudulent calls, says Rustem Khairetdinov, deputy general director of the Garda group of companies. In his opinion, voice traffic, even if encrypted at the messaging level, has features that allow it to be tracked and blocked using a DPI-class solution that the department has.

The fight against fraud may not lead to a complete blocking of the calling function in instant messengers, but if this happens, subscribers will return to regular cellular communications, the voice traffic of which fell by 5% in 2024, according to Konstantin, managing partner of TMT Consulting Ankilov told the publication.