One of the largest Internet traffic exchange points in Russia — Piter-IX — has decided to raise prices for customers. The increase will be 10% or more. The reason is a sharp increase in international traffic, which, according to market participants, is largely due to the popularity of VPN.
The operator explains the price increase not only by the load on the network, but also by the increase in infrastructure costs, including equipment for filtering traffic. At the same time, the company emphasizes that the increase in tariffs will not lead to a noticeable increase in profits — it is more about trying not to go into the red.
Interestingly, VPN is not directly mentioned in letters to customers. However, the market has long recorded that after the decline in 2022, international traffic is growing again — and a significant part of it passes through foreign nodes precisely because of VPN, as well as because of services like Telegram and YouTube.
An additional factor is discussions at the Ministry of Digital Development level. At the end of March, officials and businesses were considering measures to reduce the use of VPN, including possible restrictions and even a fee for excessive international traffic.
Experts believe that the revision of tariffs is logical: the load on the infrastructure is growing, the requirements of regulators are becoming stricter, and the cost of foreign channels is increasing. At the same time, the market is reacting cautiously so far — not all operators are ready to raise prices immediately, preferring to watch the situation.
As a result, users may not notice this directly, but for the telecom market, this is a worrying signal: the Internet is becoming more expensive to maintain, and the demand for workarounds only increases the load on the system.
