MP Oleksandr Fedienko believes that anonymity makes subscribers disenfranchised and allows mobile operators to earn big money.
Member of the Verkhovna Rada Committee on National Security, Defense and Intelligence Oleksandr Fedienko considers the situation when mobile operators have 80% anonymous subscribers to be dangerous. This situation has been actively used by bot farm owners and scammers for a long time. And in the last year – also by manufacturers of shaheeds, who, using anonymous Ukrainian SIM cards, aim their drones at our cities using mobile networks. Why do mobile operators seek to maintain the status quo?
“The situation when mobile operators have 80% of anonymous subscribers is wrong. Under such conditions, you can build a huge bot farm, an army of shaheeds, an army of scammers! Why do mobile operators want to keep everything as it is? Because this is huge money for content aggregators! A mobile operator constantly receives additional payments from consumers: 2, 5, 10 UAH. Sometimes an SMS is dropped, sometimes a subscription appears for some service, sometimes a paid call. Considering the volume of the subscriber base, this amounts to millions of dollars per month! Content aggregators receive them and share them with mobile operators. So no one is interested in anonymous, disenfranchised subscribers turning into contract customers to whom you will no longer send a tricky SMS. And if you steal money from them, you will have to answer for it under the law. One way or another, we will come to de-animization, as has already happened all over the world,” – says Oleksandr Fedienko.
The MP noted that large mobile operators have access to the relevant committee of the Verkhovna Rada, the Tax Committee, and the relevant ministry. There are official reports about these meetings. Therefore, large companies have significant influence on any legislative changes.
