Moscow turns to pagers, radios and landlines during multi-day internet outage
Mar 12th 2026
Widespread mobile internet disruptions since March 3 have pushed Moscow residents and businesses to revive pagers, radios, landlines and paper maps while officials cite security reasons for the restrictions.
- Mobile internet and voice services began failing on March 3 and by March 10 Moscow had experienced five consecutive days of outages across much of the city.
- Wildberries data show pager sales rose 73% between March 6 and March 10 versus February, radio sales rose 27% and landline phone sales rose 25%.
- Sales of city atlases and guides jumped 48% between March 6 and March 10 compared with the previous week as residents relied on physical navigation aids.
- Agenstvo analysis of Downdetector comments found outages reported in every Moscow administrative district except New Moscow, with the Central Administrative District most affected.
- Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the restrictions were imposed for security reasons, alleging Ukraine used more sophisticated attack methods and that limits would continue as needed.
- Experts estimate the daily economic cost of the communication restrictions could reach about $12.5 million.
- In 2025 Russian carriers deactivated 18.45 million SIM cards at Roskomnadzor's request, a 76% increase year on year, citing violations such as incorrect subscriber data and breaches of SIM limits.