A second internet backbone provider in the US is terminating services in Russia over the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, days after Cogent Communications did the same.
Lumen Technologies, formerly CenturyLink, announced: “We are immediately stopping our limited operations in Russia.”
Lumen had a “very limited physical presence” in the country and offered “extremely small” business services to Russia’s enterprise customers. “We do not have any consumer customers in Russia,” the company said.
However, the network monitoring company Kentik says Lumen still served some major telecommunications providers in the country including Rostelecom, TransTelekom, and the mobile operators MTS, Megafon, and VEON.
Cogent, in contrast, reportedly had several dozen enterprise customers in Russia, which also included Rostelecom, TransTelekom, Megafon, and VEON.
The decision from Lumen and Cogent to cut ties with Russia is expected to disrupt internet connectivity across the country by reducing its access to network bandwidth. This has sparked concerns local users in Russia will suffer and struggle to find reliable and objective news about the war in Ukraine.
“Without the internet, the rest of the world would not know of atrocities happening in other places. And without the internet, ordinary citizens of many countries wouldn’t know what was being carried out in their name,” Internet Society President Andrew Sullivan wrote last week.
However, in Cogent’s case, the company said its Russian customers can migrate to other internet backbone providers. “Cogent is not otherwise restricting or blocking traffic originating from or destined for Russia,” the company told PCMag.
As for Lumen, the company said its business stoppage isn’t a pause. The company is pulling out from the Russian market, citing an “increased security risk” from within the country. The wording suggests Lumen is concerned about the Russian government launching cyberattacks through the company’s network backbone to target other internet service providers or companies.
“We have not yet experienced network disruptions, but given the increasingly uncertain environment and the heightened risk of state action, we took this move to ensure the security of our and our customers’ networks, as well as the ongoing integrity of the global Internet,” according to Lumen, which says it will continue to serve the Ukrainian market.