Providers began to lose subscribers due to problems with access to YouTube

Clients of more than 135 regional telecom operators began to break contracts with companies for the provision of services due to problems in the operation of video hosting YouTube and other Google services. Against this background, the Rosteleset association, which includes more than 200 regional operators, asks the Ministry of Digital Development and Roskomnadzor to publish an official announcement explaining the reasons for the slowdown in the services of the American company and their “uneven degradation” among different telecom companies.

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According to the source, the letter in question was sent to the Minister of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev and the head of Roskomnadzor Andrei Lipov on August 7. It notes that the companies experienced “severe and uneven slowdowns in YouTube, Google’s search engine and its services.” In this regard, the number of customer complaints about the provision of low-quality services by providers has increased exponentially. Rosteleseti noted that YouTube does not work through the “home network,” but at the same time you can interact with the service normally on mobile networks. Because of this, customers consider their home Internet provider to be guilty and terminate service contracts.

The Association of Small Regional Telecom Operators sent a similar letter to the Ministry of Digital Development and Roskomnadzor on August 8. It says that the slowdown in services is occurring “sharply and chaotically across different operators in all regions of the country,” which is why companies are “massively losing their subscriber base.”

The letter from Rosteleset emphasizes that due to the “lack of official statements in the media and published regulations on this problem,” operators are not able to correctly explain to subscribers the reasons for the measures taken. The Association asks the Ministry of Digital Development and Roskomnadzor to publish an official public explanation on this issue, as well as take measures to disseminate information about the reasons for the slowdown of YouTube and carry out competent work to identify the reasons for the uneven degradation of the service among different operators.

According to experts, regional operators may experience problems with YouTube operations more acutely due to fewer international connections. For cellular operators, technical threat countermeasures (TCM) are not located between users and Google caching servers, but in the same segment with them. Traffic from caching servers flows normally, so in some cases YouTube works stably on mobile devices. It is also possible that the uneven degradation of YouTube is due to the fact that various ways of influencing the operation of the service are currently still being assessed.