Cellular operators still cancel national roaming charges

Federal operators “VimpelCom”, “MegaFon” and MTS in the near future plan to cancel the fee for incoming calls in intranet roaming. As for VimpelCom (Beeline brand), this will happen no later than August 20th. Thus, if a subscriber uses communication services in the operator’s network, being outside the “home” region, then he will not have to pay.

Now a subscriber in national roaming pays about 5 rubles for incoming calls. for a minute of conversation - in the event that the call came from a different region, writes RBC. Information has already been confirmed by VympelCom spokeswoman Anna Aybasheva.

“Since April, all our subscribers, traveling outside of their region in Russia, call, send SMS and use the mobile Internet as at home. The next step is the cancellation of fees for any incoming calls while traveling around Russia in the Beeline network. Thus, taking into account the wishes of our subscribers and listening to the opinion of FAS, we finally formed simple and understandable pricing conditions “like home” for any services throughout the whole territory, ”said Irina Lebedeva, executive vice president of marketing and brand for VimpelCom.

National roaming is called its kind in which the client moves within the same country, connecting to the networks of different operators. Now national roaming works not only in relation to various operators, but also in relation to one network of a global operator.

As far as one can understand, the operators decided to cancel roaming payments against their will - they were forced to do so by FAS. In July last year, the regulator indicated that
MTS, MegaFon, VimpelCom and T2 RTK Holding (Tele2 brand) need to change tariffs when subscribers travel across Russia. According to representatives of the FAS, the tariff policy of the operators violates the law “On Protection of Competition”. The service demanded that operators remove the difference in tariffs by December 15, 2017. But this was not done. The specialized departments together with the operators proved that it is impossible to reduce the tariffs so quickly, therefore the operators were granted a delay. For MTS, MegaFon and VimpelCom, a new term was set - January 31, 2018. "T2 RTK Holding" received a deferment until May 2018, a little later this period was extended until August 31 of this year (that is, the company did not violate the formal deadline).

The Big Three operators have changed the tariffs for intranet roaming, equating the cost of outgoing calls within one region to the cost of local calls. Calls to "foreign" regions equated to the cost of long-distance calls. At the same time, incoming calls from other regions made for subscribers paid. However, the regulator was not satisfied with the new prices, and already in March of this year, the department opened an antitrust case against these companies.

Yulia Dorokhina, a representative of MegaFon, noted that this operator began to reset the fee for incoming calls in intranet roaming. Zeroing for most subscribers will be implemented until the end of August, and for the rest - until the first half of September.

It is worth recalling that for the abolition of intranet and national roaming in Russiathe deputies also voted - in the first reading in June of this year. According to the authors of the bill for which the vote was taken, the operators, due to the implementation of the proposed measures, will lose no more than 1.5% of the total revenues. The deputies indicated that in clause 54 “On communication” it is necessary to add a clause, which would speak about the need to pay for telephone connections between subscribers within the country at a single tariff of a telecom operator. There is no difference in which region the subscribers are located.

Roaming surcharge, according to officials, should be canceled for both directions of calls - both outgoing and incoming. International roaming at the same time decided to save.

The need for changes in legislation deputies argued that national roaming appeared after the introduction of special regulation. At the beginning of the development of cellular communication in Russia, there was an all-Russian telecommunications operator, the company Interregional Transittelecom. Now this type of connection has outlived itself, but national roaming has been preserved. But operators have no additional costs when working in roaming mode, so subscribers do not have to pay more for a call from another region.