Europe Not Probing Telco Ties With Russia

Europe doesn't appear to be looking into communication companies' ties with Russia beyond sanctioning Russia Today and Sputnik, stakeholders said.

Telecom and internet infrastructure providers are providing services to Ukrainians at home and abroad, but there may not be many member telcos active in Russia, said European Competitive Telecommunications Association (ECTA) General Director Luc Hindryckx. Standard business relationships such as interconnections and service continue, and apparently no "tricky" situation such as Russians owning shares in EU companies has arisen, said a telecom industry source.

U.S. technology company Lumen, an ECTA member, pulled the plug on its business in Russia, saying it ceased its limited operations for enterprise customers because of "increased security risk" inside the country. It said it doesn't have consumer customers there.

The Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications "currently has no plans to initiate" a review of Russian links akin to that in the U.S., it emailed (see 2203180051). "There are existing procedures in place, such as monitoring by authorities from member states at a national level, but we are not aware of any additional initiatives of this kind." BEREC is, however, helping ISPs block RT and Sputnik by clarifying the EU regulation ordering it and offering assistance on technical issues.

One issue being discussed in Brussels is whether it's desirable to cut all commercial internet and commercial ties, the telecom industry expert emailed: "We're not talking about goods, or financial services, but about the lifeline of getting Western information to Russia, and relevant information from Russia." However, even without "extreme" measures to cut Russia off communications, financial sanctions can have an indirect effect, he said: What about payments for telecoms services between Russia and the EU? If Russians can't pay, do you cut off or maintain the services? Beyond the requirement that telcos and ISPs block RT and Sputnik, "for the moment, nobody has put on the table cutting all telecom/comms ties with Russia."

"Disconnecting Russia from the internet is complicated" because of the number of connections into and out of the country, emailed John Strand of Strand Consult. Beyond that, he said, it's not a good idea in a world where [Russian President Vladimir] Putin is trying to restrict Russians' access to services on the internet."

The Russia-Ukraine conflict raised cybersecurity to the top of the European and national agendas, blogged telecom consultant Innocenzo Genna. That issue was already under debate at the policy level in the context of 5G, the cloud sector and the resilience of essential telematic infrastructures, but the invasion brought attention to a new subject -- use of the Russian anti-virus system Kaspersky used by many European governments.

The problem is that "the foreign jurisdiction of the parent company is unavoidable," Genna wrote. It's not enough to move branches, data centers and codes to the EU or Switzerland, because if the parent company of a technology company continues to be subject to the jurisdiction of Russia -- or the U.S. or China -- no European contract will be able to provide legal security when the parent forces it to act in compliance with its non-European national security laws. Thus, there are no completely self-sufficient solutions that allow a single country to use only national technology, and Europeans "must get used to depend [sic] technologically on non-European suppliers." Achieving interdependence means doing everything possible to support the development of European tech companies, he said.