Russian telecoms firms want government compensation for data storage law costs

MOSCOW: Russia’s leading telecoms operators have asked the government to subsidise their purchases of equipment they need to comply with a new data storage law, a letter seen by Reuters showed.

The request was made by Russia’s biggest mobile phone operator MTS, state-controlled telecoms group Rostelecom and operators Megafon and Vimpelcom, as well as Digital Economy, a non-commercial group set up by businesses to help implement the government’s digitalisation programme.