Pursuant to Federal Law No. 41-FZ on Combating Cyber Fraud dated April 1, 2025, and the supporting Government Resolution No. 1300, Russia has mandated that all outbound calls made by legal entities and individual entrepreneurs must carry call labels starting from September 1, 2025, as a measure to combat telecom fraud involving spoofed numbers. However, due to technical and cost constraints, the system failed to operate fully and properly in the initial implementation phase.
The detailed implementation rules for this regulation are formulated by the Ministry of Digital Development of Russia, and telecom operators are responsible for on-the-ground execution. When an enterprise outbound call is connected to a user's mobile phone, the screen must display the enterprise name/commercial logo and the call service category (the draft covers a total of 38 categories, such as banking, advertising, real estate, etc.). Supplementary information may be added, with a 32-character limit for all displayed content, which supports both Russian and Latin characters. Enterprises must sign an information display agreement with telecom operators to enable the labeling service; ordinary call recipients incur no charges, while the calling enterprise bears the service fees related to call labeling. Industry estimates put the total infrastructure investment of telecom operators over six years at more than 11 billion rubles.
When the regulation took effect, there were no separate penalties for missed labeling. However, if an unlabeled call constitutes unsolicited advertising and promotion, penalties may be imposed in accordance with the Code of Administrative Offenses, with a maximum fine of 1 million rubles for legal entities. Meanwhile, telecom operators have the right to directly block unlabeled bulk outbound calls. Multiple media outlets reported that due to practical obstacles such as network transformation and cost allocation, the labeling function was not fully rolled out for a period after the new regulation took effect, and services of some major operators even experienced suspensions, leaving a transition period for actual compliance implementation.
From the perspective of cross-border voice services, service providers that conduct enterprise outbound calls and notification voice calls targeting the Russian market need to connect with local telecom operators to complete the signing and configuration of call labeling services. Bulk outbound calls without compliant labeling face the risk of being directly blocked, and the actual availability of the labeling function must be confirmed before business launch.
