Russia's President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a bill that will give Russia an independent Internet separates from the rest of the world, Financial Times report.
The move for a 'sovereign Internet' is to 'ensure the safe and sustainable functioning' of Russia's Internet in case the rest of the world decides to disconnect or block their access.
The law will come into effect on the November 1, and then all Russian web traffic will be forced to use the country's servers and stay within the country. Russia's telecom watchdog, Roskomnazor will filter the traffic for prohibited contents, and will also ensure that traffic from Russia doesn't go via servers abroad.
However, there are fears that this new law which demands that all traffic be channeled via government servers will metamorph into Russia's version of the Great Firewall of China will severe form of online censorship.
The major Russian telcos such as MegaFon, Beeline, MTS, RosTelecom and others have all agreed with the new law but isn't ok with the technical implementation which they believe will cause major service disruption to Russian Internet traffic.
For this to work, Internet service providers in Russia will have to install 'technical means' to re-route all Russian Internet traffic to exchange points or points managed by Roskomnazor.
The Financial Times says the systems will be trialed at an unknown date later in the year when "Kremlin will compel ISPs and other communication services" to help test out the system.