Russia's First City With A Million Inhabitants Completely Disconnected From Mobile Internet

The internet has been down for almost a week now.

St. Petersburg has been almost out of mobile Internet service for a week, BBC reported in the project "In Connection." The outages in Russia's second-largest city have been ongoing since December 11, when authorities declared an air danger due to an attack by Ukrainian drones on the Leningrad region.

The region's governor, Alexander Drozdenko, said that "law enforcement agencies, based on the operational situation," block or slow down certain websites and temporarily limit mobile communications for the sake of security, "taking into account the geopolitical location of the region." He also warned that before the New Year and during the vacations, outages may become more frequent due to "provocations, UAV attacks and attempts of cyber interference in the infrastructure."

Since the beginning of December, the St. Petersburg edition of "Paper" counted 9 days when users complained about problems with mobile communication. And twice (on the 12th and 15th) the Internet was lost without any warning from the authorities.

There were blackouts on December 13-14, when the air danger was again announced in Leningrad region. In the afternoon and evening of December 15, Beeline notified subscribers about network failures in several districts of St. Petersburg due to "security measures." Users of other operators also complained about the lack of Internet access.

December 16, the threat of UAV attack was announced both in St. Petersburg and in the Leningrad region. The administration of the northern capital warned about disruptions in mobile Internet and reduction of data transmission speed to 2G.

Downdetector service has recorded almost 1400 complaints of city residents about communication problems over the last 24 hours. And people write that even their home Internet doesn't work. "One of the residents is indignant.

Petersburg has faced a complete shutdown of mobile Internet for the first time, notes "Na svyazi". Before that, prolonged shutdowns were recorded only in four regions - Krasnoyarsk Krai, Buryatia, Belgorod and Rostov regions.

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