Moscow: Russian internet service providers have received notifications from Google saying it was terminating service contracts for the Google Global Cache servers speeding up the loading of the company’s services, including YouTube content, Russian newspaper RBC reported on Thursday, citing telecommunications sources.
The Orenburg-based telecom operator Radiosvyaz received a notification from Google’s Irish subsidiary Raiden Unlimited Company saying that the servers are being disconnected due to a change in legal practice and that Google employees will contact the provider shortly to disconnect the equipment, according to the report.
A spokesperson for Radiosvyaz told RBC that the servers were turned off on May 19, while the notification came a few days later.
A similar notification was received by the MIPT Telecom, a provider based in the Moscow Region and affiliated with the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, a spokesperson told RBC. In its notification, Google linked the disconnection of servers to the fact that the university is on the international sanctions list, the spokesperson was cited as saying.
A representative of Russia’s state-run telecom provider Rostelecom told RBC that it experienced no outages of Google Global Cache servers so far. Representatives of Russia’s two largest private telecom giants — MTS and MegaFon — also said that all servers and equipment were functioning as normal.
