On November 10, 2025, a videoconference consultation was held to discuss the roaming restrictions for foreign SIM cards in Russia, which were introduced in October 2025.

The consultation was attended by representatives from:

• The Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Media of the Russian Federation

• The Ministry of Communications and Informatization of the Republic of Belarus

• The Telecommunications Committee of the Ministry of Artificial Intelligence and Digital Development of the Republic of Kazakhstan

• Russian telecommunications operators: PJSC "MTS", LLC "T2 Mobile", PJSC "VimpelCom" (Beeline), among others.

• Kazakh telecommunications operators: JSC "Kcell", LLP "Mobile Telecom-Service" (Tele2), and LLP "KaR-Tel" (Beeline).

The consultation was moderated by the RCC Director General, Alexey Borodin.

The goal of the consultation was to establish optimal frameworks for inter-operator interaction under the new restrictions, aiming to minimize disruption for permanent residents of the RCC and CIS regions.

The participants agreed that the issues discussed are common to all CIS countries. They noted that the very nature of mobile communication is rapidly evolving, which necessitates the development of unified regional approaches to create a new regulatory framework.

The discussions focused on potential approaches to subscriber authentication at border crossings, including:

• Creating and sharing "whitelists" of subscribers based on national mobile subscriber triplets.*

• Deploying small-cell base stations at border checkpoints.

• Implementing automated solutions such as CAPTCHA.**

• Leveraging data from national foreigner registration systems, such as ruID, during the registration process.

• Introducing a multi-language SMS notification system for arriving subscribers, using several regional languages.

The consultations will continue, including within the work of the RCC Council of Telecommunications and Infocommunication Operators and the RCC Commission on Telecommunications Regulation.

* A subscriber triplet is a unique identifier that combines a subscriber's name, phone number, and their device's IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity).

** CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart) is a challenge-response test used to determine whether a user is human.

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