Due to slowdown of YouTube in Russia, customers massively terminate contracts with regional operators

Subscribers of more than 135 regional telecom operators have started terminating their contracts due to disruptions in the operation of YouTube and other Google services, reports Kommersant.

According to the publication, the Rostelecom association (which includes more than 200 regional telecom operators) sent a letter on August 7 to the Minister of Digital Development Maksut Shadayev and the head of Roskomnadzor Andrei Lipov, requesting an official explanation for the reasons behind the slowdown of services and their "uneven degradation" among different companies. The association confirmed the letter's dispatch and noted that it had been received by the addressees.

Oleg Grishchenko, president of Rostelecom, noted that around one hundred operators had complained about the "severe and uneven slowdown in the operation of YouTube, Google's search engine, and its services." Users blame providers for issues with Google services over their "home networks" and are terminating contracts with them, he added. "The negative response towards operators is measured in thousands of complaints," Grishchenko clarified.

On August 8, the Association of Small Regional Telecom Operators (AMOR; which includes more than 120 companies) also sent a letter to the Ministry of Digital Development and Roskomnadzor due to the "sharp and chaotic" slowdown of YouTube’s speed across various operators in all regions of the country and the "massive loss of the subscriber base," Kommersant writes.

Dmitry Galushko, head of AMOR, reported that they had received 35 complaints from operators, and the number of subscribers who decided to terminate their contracts with companies exceeded 1,000 people in two weeks.

Rostelecom explained that due to the "lack of official statements in the media and published regulatory acts on the issue," operators are unable to explain the reasons for YouTube's problems to users. In this regard, the association asked the Ministry of Digital Development and Roskomnadzor to publish an official clarification and to "carry out competent work to identify the causes of the uneven degradation of YouTube and Google’s search engine among different operators, despite the interconnectedness of these networks."

Recently, users in Russia have been experiencing disruptions in YouTube’s operation. Alexander Khinshtein, head of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, explained the slowdown in video loading on YouTube by issues with data storage in Russian data centers and stated that the speed could drop to 40% on desktop computers, and then to 70%.

Rostelecom linked the disruptions to issues with Google’s equipment, which has not been updated since the start of military actions in Ukraine. Google responded by stating that "this is not the result of any technical problems or actions on our part."