Quality of free Wi-Fi in Makhachkala has caused complaints from city residents

Mobile internet outages in Makhachkala continue despite the absence of any government announcements about this. There are difficulties connecting to free internet points, and businesses are suffering losses, city residents said. The republic's Ministry of Digital Development has acknowledged problems with the access points.

As "Kavkazsky Uzel" wrote, new public internet access points have opened in Makhachkala amid mobile internet outages, but Telegram users complained about the poor performance of the access points. Public Wi-Fi hotspots in Makhachkala are unstable and provide a weak signal, and in the conditions of regular mobile Internet shutdowns, the number of active Wi-Fi zones is not enough, local residents reported.

Despite the fact that recently there have been no official reports about disconnecting mobile Internet due to a possible
threat of a UAV flight, in the center of Makhachkala there has been no mobile connection for the past two weeks, Makhachkala residents and visitors to the city told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

There are no Wi-Fi access points at the central city market, known as Market No. 2, because of which traders are incurring large losses, entrepreneur Arsen told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"For objective reasons, we do not have terminals for accepting cashless payments. If there is no cash, customers usually transfer money to a bank card. For the last month we have had virtually no mobile communications, because of this Makhachkala residents and tourists, of whom there are many, cannot pay for purchases and leave. There are no ATMs nearby. A lot of agricultural products, despite the demand, remain unsold," he said.

Rasul Gamzatov Avenue, Daniyalov Street, Pushkin Street, Primorsky Park - this is the city center, where there is constantly no mobile Internet

The food and meal delivery service is practically paralyzed, an employee of the delivery company Magomed told a "Caucasian Knot" correspondent.

"In the center of Makhachkala, work is at a standstill, since there is no communication. Even if a customer places an order from home, where they have Wi-Fi, the delivery guys can't deliver the order on time, because mobile maps don't work, they can't find the address," the entrepreneur says.

In the center of Makhachkala, mobile Internet is regularly unavailable, and it's impossible to connect to public hotspots, said
Iraskhan.

"Rasul Gamzatov Avenue, Daniyalov Street, Pushkin Street, Primorsky Park - this is the center of the city, where there is always no mobile Internet. Today we were walking with the children in the park, we wanted to call a taxi, the application didn't work. "We talked to tourists walking around, everyone was complaining that there was no connection," the man said.

On August 29, the Ministry of Digital Development of Dagestan published a post on its Telegram channel, where it confirmed that they were receiving complaints about problems connecting to free Wi-Fi hotspots installed in parks, squares, alleys, as well as on the central square of Makhachkala and Kaspiysk.

"Testing was carried out, which confirmed the presence of problems with the functioning of public Wi-Fi hotspots. The received
information was passed on to the telecom operator, who is already carrying out troubleshooting work to optimize the network and improve the quality of services provided," the publication says.

Recall that on March 8, the Minister of Digital Development of Dagestan Yuri Gamzatov announced that the Telegram messenger was blocked and does not work in Dagestan and Chechnya. According to him, the decision to do so was made at the federal level at the suggestion of law enforcement agencies, since Telegram is often used by enemies, an example of which is the riots at the Makhachkala airport [in October 2023]. The authorities acknowledged blocking the messenger only in March, although by that time access to Telegram had been absent for several months, local residents indicated. The temporary unblocking of Telegram in Dagestan on May 26 and 27, during the visit to the republic of the official representative of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Maria Zakharova, affected only some of the messenger's users in the republic, and from May 28, access to the messenger from Dagestan was again closed.

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