investigation
The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) continues to work on the cancellation of roaming in Russia. At the same time, the activities of the regulator are at the stage that precedes the antimonopoly investigation against mobile operators. According to Vedomosti, the relevant information appeared in the minutes of the FAS meeting with operators and departments on March 30, 2017. The FAS plans to start preparing for the investigation, since it is forcing the “slow negotiating process and the absence of specific decisions to reduce tariffs on trips around Russia” to this regulator.
The meeting on the cancellation of roaming involving the FAS is not the first. At a previous meeting on November 29 last year, cellular operators made a commitment to develop tariff proposals. The regulators promised to develop appropriate measures to change the legislation. Unfortunately, all these intentions remained on paper. So, on March 30 this year, the deputy head of the FAS Anatoly Golomolzin said that there are practically no changes that allow subscribers to use “home” tariffs for roaming in roaming. From the side of the operators of proposals for new tariffs, there were no reports.
It should be noted that for successful work to reduce roaming tariffs, operators had to send each other offers to reduce tariffs for mutual settlement services. The prices in roaming for subscribers to a great extent depend on this, but in the end the operators did not take any actions in this direction.
Operators themselves, in particular, Megafon and MTS believe that they take sufficient measures to reduce prices in roaming measures. The representative of MTS claims that the company already now about 80% of subscribers who travel to other cities, talk at the price closest to the “home” tariffs. Now MTS is preparing a proposal with per-second billing of calls in Russia, which will reduce the cost of communication, and very significantly. Similarly, things are in the “Megaphone”. In any case, the representatives of this company believe. Yulia Dorokhina, a representative of Megafon, says that now more than 80% of Megafon’s subscribers save on trips in Russia, using special roaming tariffs. For example, in most tariff packages, the cost of calls and mobile Internet outside the “home” does not change.
In “T2 RTK Holding” (Tele2 brand) they stated that the cost of intranet roaming of the company is economically justified. Konstantin Prokshin, the operator’s representative, says that on the part of the fares in Russia, minutes, gigabytes and sms are spent from packages, so the subscriber does not bear any additional costs. Plus, for some tariffs, the reduced cost of calls is actual.
Only VimpelCom declares its intention to develop and submit its proposals on roaming tariffs to the FAS. The operator believes that price cuts in Russia are quite possible, but here the problem is the cost of completing the call – this indicator greatly affects pricing in roaming. It is worth recalling that in December CEO of Vimpelcom Shelle Johnsen announced the support of the abolition of intranet roaming in Russia. But for this, it is necessary to reduce tariffs, for which operators pay each other for completing calls.
Now several operators, including VimpelCom, Megafon and T2 RTK Holding, are engaged in the issue of reducing the call termination cost. According to the analytical agencies JPMorgan and VTB Capital, the offer of Vimpelcom is unlikely to be supported by Megafon and MTS. By the way, in January of this year, FAS filed a case against MegaFon for raising international roaming tariffs.
