Russia's Digital Ministry to require operators to provide 1 Gbps in apartment buildings

Russia's Ministry of Digital Development wants to set a minimum home internet speed in law: at least 1 Gbps in every apartment building. Kommersant reports this, citing a speech by Deputy Minister Dmitry Ugnivenko. The obligation would fall on telecom operators. The ministry plans to submit its telecom reform bill to the State Duma by the end of 2026.

Only two details are public so far: the figure and the deadline. Everything else will have to be gleaned from the text of the bill once it appears.

Gigabit per building or per apartment

The sources use different wording. The headline refers to apartments; the account of the speech refers to an apartment building. The difference matters.

A gigabit per building means channel capacity up to the building itself. Residents then share that capacity, and each one's real-world speed ends up noticeably lower. A gigabit per subscriber requires a different architecture: fiber to the apartment, or at least a good in-building network and equipment that can handle that load. The operator's capital costs differ several-fold between these scenarios. The ministry has not said which one it has in mind.

The technical minimum for a gigabit

Even if the rule is adopted, a gigabit will reach the subscriber only if several conditions are met:

• 1 Gbps equals a theoretical 125 MB/s. At that speed, a 100 GB file downloads in about 13 minutes.
• The router and network card ports must be gigabit. Fast Ethernet devices top out at around 100 Mbps.
• Category 5e cable carries 1 Gbps over distances of up to 100 meters. Older wiring cannot deliver this.
• Wireless access requires Wi-Fi 5 or newer, preferably Wi-Fi 6. Real-world speed over the air depends on walls, interference, and the number of devices.
• The operator's backbone links and the capacity of aggregation nodes must withstand the residents' simultaneous load, not just the peak value on a single port.

Who will have it hardest

Regional and small operators will face the most questions. Part of Russia's housing stock is still connected through schemes where the last stretch runs over old copper, and a gigabit is not achievable there without replacing the lines. Upgrades cost money. It remains unclear how the cost would be split between the operator, the management company, and residents, and whether it would affect tariffs. These are so far risks, not announced decisions.

The initiative also has a practical side for the tech industry. Cloud services, video calls, storage, home cameras with cloud analytics, and downloads of local language models weighing from a few to tens of gigabytes all depend on connection speed, especially upstream. From the available information, it is unclear whether the rule will cover upload speed. For many use cases, that matters more than a downstream gigabit.

What to check now

Operators should audit the buildings in their coverage area: technology type, condition of in-building wiring, and node load. That will give them a cost estimate before specific requirements appear.

Management companies and residents should look at the condition of the building's cable routes and at which tariff and equipment are actually installed in the apartments.

Ordinary users should check their router for gigabit port support and the Wi-Fi standard. If an operator raises speeds in the future, the equipment inside the apartment will be the limiting factor.

The most important details are still to come: the text of the bill, the compliance deadlines, and the enforcement mechanism. For now, this is a stated intention, not a rule in force.