FSUE Main Radio Frequency Center

Structure

The structure of the state radio frequency service consists of the "Main Radio Frequency Center" and 7 radio frequency centers of federal districts:

• RCC of the Central Federal District (Moscow)
• RCC of the North-Western Federal District (St. Petersburg)
• RCC of the Southern Federal District (r.) Rostov-on-Don
• RCC of the Volga Federal District (Nizhny Novgorod)
• RCC of the Ural Federal District (r.) Yekaterinburg
• RCC of the Siberian Federal District (r.) Novosibirsk
• RCC of the Far Eastern Federal District (r.) Khabarovsk

2017: A site blocking unit appeared under Roskomnadzor

The department, which is studying ways to block Internet resources, was created Main Radio Frequency Center in (GRCC), subordinate. To Roskomnadzor This unit is conducting experiments to restrict access to sites, write "." News This is done in order to ensure compliance with the new laws that regulate the Internet sphere. Among them is a law banning anonymizers to bypass blocked sites. According to the head of Roskomnadzor, Alexandra Zharova the department is also looking for ways to ban anonymizers that do not comply with the law. And besides, the department is studying the behavior of violators who are trying to bypass the blocking of sites. See the main article on the topic Censorship (control) on the Internet. Experience of Russia

Why the GRCC is needed

After receiving the frequencies, the network design must be approved by the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "State Radio Frequency Center" (GRCC). The operator sends there a list of sites for base stations, their technical characteristics, installation height and direction of antennas - the so-called frequency-territorial plan. This is necessary for the GRCC to check whether the network will interfere with other transmitters, including security officials. And only after passing the examination of electromagnetic compatibility (EMC), and if necessary, then also after conducting field tests, the operator can finally obtain permits from Roskomnadzor for each base station, the so-called frequency assignments, and start building a network.

Frequency conversion

Military equipment, for compatibility with the work of which you need to undergo an examination, often simply stands on the balance sheet of the military unit, but has not worked for a long time, says the general director of one of the telecom operators. Sometimes they can't even turn it on during tests, he said. But despite this, the military usually requires conversion work, which can be done by three organizations close to them - the National Radio Engineering Bureau (NRTB), Geyser and Voentelecom.

According to SPARK, NRTB, Geyser and Voentelecom together earned 5.85 billion rubles in 2010 (the lion's part - Voentelecom: 4.94 billion rubles).

There are few frequency specialists who understand military specifics in the country, one hundred people, this is a closed club and they are all military, says the manager of one of the companies engaged in frequency clearing. According to him, "Geyser" is conditionally close to the Space Forces, NRTB - to the Air Force, and "Voentelecom" - to the leadership of the Ministry of Defense. The price of work for October 2011 in terms of conversion can reach 80% of the cost of the base station and varies greatly by region: in Moscow it can be four times more than in St. Petersburg, says the source of Vedomosti. The amounts of these contracts sometimes become public: for example, the NRTB contract with Megafon for the conversion of E-GSM frequencies cost $28.3 million.

Criticism of tariffs and service

As of October 2011, the radio frequency center, in fact, is a monopolist for EMC expertise services, but its tariffs are not regulated in any way, are not justified and overestimated, says the general director of one of the communications companies. According to him, the EMC examination, together with full-scale tests of one base station, costs 20% of its cost. In this case, changing the height of the suspension or reconfiguring the antennas leads to the need for new negotiations. In addition, the radio frequency service takes a fee even if the result of the examination is negative, the co-owner of one of the communication companies is indignant. That is, a situation may arise when the operator did not agree on a single site, but received the money.

In case of interest in frequencies, the military may simply not agree on the use of frequencies. For this reason, for all a year and a half, while the Ministry of Defense lobbied for the issuance of frequencies in the 2.3-2.4 GHz range by Basza Telecom, Rostelecom could not start building a network in this range. The operator submitted to the GRCC applications for frequency assignments in the spring of 2011. "When competitions were held, these frequencies were declared free. Then it turned out that there were some problems with them, "- the general director of Rostelecom Alexander Provotorov was surprised, he threatened to sue if the GRCC did not respond on time. The deadline expired at the end of July 2011, but the company never filed a lawsuit.

The fact is that the provision on conducting an examination in the GRCC gives officials and employees of the radio frequency center a very large freedom of action, explains the general director of one of the telecom operators. In particular, according to him, there are no clear deadlines for certain stages of the GRCC. To force through the GRCC court to conduct an examination of the EMC of its base stations at frequencies of 3.4-3.5 GHz in August 2011, the Wimax operator Freshtel tried, but the court refused him.

History

On March 27, 2008, Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation No. 213 "On some issues of the activities of the radio frequency service" was issued. According to the Decree of the Federal State Unitary Enterprise "Main Radio Frequency Center" and radio frequency centers of federal districts were transferred to the Federal Service for Supervision of Mass Communications, Communications and Cultural Heritage Protection.

2023

Switch to equipment with Russian processors to switch traffic during network accidents

In mid-April 2024, the Main Radio Frequency Center (GRCC) announced the transfer of equipment to Russian processors for switching traffic during accidents in networks. We are talking about the so-called bypass switches, import substitution in this area will take several years.

According to Sergey Temny, director of the Center for Special Projects of FSUE GRCHs, in the specified equipment in 2024, power supplies should be replaced with Russian-made devices. They will find use in equipment necessary to switch traffic in the event of emergencies without affecting the performance of the network of telecommunications operators.

Unsplash

{{quote 'At the same time, for 2025-2027, we already widely expect the transition to Russian processors, which are being developed by several companies in parallel. And therefore, we hope that the degree of localization of the equipment that we use, and accordingly its security and power of attorney, will be much higher. This equipment was developed for us, we provided a certain level of ordering, conducted testing, have already been installed in the networks of operators, we use it, "he said. }} Sergei Temny called the main problem of the production and supply of Russian equipment in the absence of a domestic component base against the background of insufficient orders from enterprises in the past, as well as with limited state support.

The Ministry of Industry and Trade, for example, takes many measures to subsidize the industry, but there are certain nuances there. For example, the development is very well financed, but getting really real money, or some kind of preferential lending for the organization of production, for the initial purchase of components, is a problem, - said the director of the Center for Special Projects of FSUE GRCC[1]

Failure to purchase communication control equipment for RUB 1 bln

On August 21, 2023, it became known that FSUE Main Radio Frequency Center (GRCC), subordinate to Roskomnadzor, was unable to conclude two large contracts with a total value of about 1 billion rubles for the supply of specialized equipment for monitoring the radio frequency spectrum.

According to the Vedomosti newspaper, both purchases were placed at the end of April 2023 in the form of requests for proposals. One of the tenders involved the purchase of mobile technical complexes of radio control on 22 cars for work in the Crimea. It was about minibuses with an isolated driver's cab and a separated technical unit and a compartment for the work of two operators. The estimated value of the contract is 777.2 million rubles.

As part of the second tender, the department intended to purchase an antenna-feeder switching device, hardware and software and mast equipment, as well as a thermal cabinet with air conditioning, fire extinguishing and alarm systems. The cost of these products was estimated at 208.4 million rubles.

Equipment is needed by the GRCC to monitor the operation of telecom operators and broadcasting centers of television companies, as well as various departments, taxi services and transport companies using walkie-talkies. In addition, such hardware and software complexes make it possible to assess the compatibility of different radioelectronic means. The equipment is also used to track the activities of amateur radio operators.

However, on May 18, 2023, both applications were declared invalid. After this date, the agency did not announce similar tenders. Market participants believe that the disruption of purchases may be explained by the current geopolitical situation. The fact is that earlier GRCC purchased software and equipment mainly from the international company Rohde-Schwarz, which stopped supplying its products to Russia. At the same time, domestic developers are not always ready to offer suitable alternatives.

The purchase could not take place, because none of the Russian suppliers managed to offer equipment suitable for technical requirements, - say participants in the Russian market.[2]

Penalty for employee database leak

On May 4, 2023, the Main Radio Frequency Center (GRCC) was fined 30 thousand rubles by the Simonovsky District Magistrate's Court for leaking personal data of employees. The organization subordinate to Roskomnadzor was found guilty under Part 2 of Article 13.11 of the Administrative Code ("violation of legislation in the field of personal data").

According to Interfax, citing a statement by the press service of the Simonovsky court, the GRCC did not ensure the confidentiality of personal data and did not exclude illegal access of third parties to the database. Details of the court case were not disclosed.

It is assumed that we are talking about a data breach that occurred in November 2022. Then the Cyber ​ ​ Guerrilla hacker group took responsibility for the cyber attack on the GRCC. The hackers said they hacked into the internal GRCC network, unloaded documents, as well as internal correspondence of employees. In addition, according to hackers, they managed to encrypt (make it impossible for an authorized user to access) employee workstations and damage the organization's infrastructure.

GRCC was fined by the magistrate's court for 30 thousand rubles for leaking personal data of employees

At the time of publication of the material on the network, ten screenshots were found with which the attackers confirmed the fact of data leakage from the GRCC system. In particular, they posted fragments of communication between employees in their internal messenger, screenshots from the mailbox of the head of one of the internal GRCC groups, as well as images of the console of the internal DLP system (Data Loss Prevention, the company's information leakage protection system) of the organization.