Mobile Internet Issues Continue in St. Petersburg Despite Lifted Drone Threat
Mobile internet remained inaccessible for a second consecutive day in St. Petersburg and the surrounding region despite the authorities lifting the Thursday drone warning, media reported Friday.
Leningrad region Governor Alexander Drozdenko warned Thursday that mobile internet speeds “could be down” due to the drone threat. He later said the drones were downed outside the region without mentioning mobile internet speeds.
According to St. Petersburg news outlet Fontanka, users continued experiencing mobile internet outages on Friday, affecting work and daily life rendering services like payment systems, delivery apps and taxi apps inaccessible.
Russia’s big three telecom providers said the outages were outside their control.
Authorities say the restrictions are a way to foil drone strikes.
Monitoring services said on Thursday that mobile internet outages hit 59 Russian regions.
So-called “white lists” of approved services were activated in 53 regions. The white list includes government services portal Gosuslugi, Russian tech platform Yandex, social networks Vkontakte and Odnoklassniki, online marketplaces Ozon and Wildberries, as well as the Mir payment system.
St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region began testing mobile internet white lists on Dec. 1.
Cybersecurity analysts have forecast that Russia could fully transition to a white-list internet by 2028.
Regular internet outages across Russia began in early May amid an uptick in Ukrainian drone attacks and have expanded across a vast majority of regions, including those in Siberia and the Far East.
