The tariff did its job, or why operators go to defend the rejection of no-limit

    The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) has asked the operators for reasons for which they have waived tariffs for unlimited Internet. If the grounds are inconclusive, the FAS may oblige operators to return everything as it was. The operators will have to prove both the actual reasons and the lack of concerted action to cut the tariff line.

    The reasons operators call network overload, created by just a few percent of users. That is, the majority of users suffer because of the minority who use no limit. Operators now also call unlimited promotional offers, rather than a fixed tariff. What can FAS take into account and what will it affect?



    In the nuances of justification, each of the operators proposed their own version. Someone said that there was little demand for no-limit, someone about connecting all of its subscribers who were interested in no-limit. There are contradictions in the statements. At the end of 2016, the director of VimpelCom, Shell John Johnson, talks about very fast loading of 4G networks, as the reason for refusing to be unlimited and wanting to educate the user to pay for each megabyte, and in February 2017, the spokesman for the same VimpelCom, Anna Aibasheva, claims that the failure was insufficient the penetration of smartphones with the 4G module and the inadequate transition of users to 4G networks.

    The statement of the operators looks clearer if you read its implications, which may include such options:

    - “we don’t want to spend it ourselves / no money for network modernization, especially since some of the money must be spent on the government’s initiatives to store traffic”
    - “we’re sorry that the growth in mobile traffic increased 1.5 times during the year, and our revenues started fall. Shareholders will not understand this. ” Operators' revenues of some quarters of 2016 have declined - which has not happened for 5-7 years.

    The FAS is likely to recognize the first position as being respectful, the second - hardly.
    For introducing unlimited Internet and canceling it on average in less than a year is more like a marketing device than analyzing the impact of new tariffs. And the coordinated marketing techniques that mislead the user is just the competence of the FAS. Unsuccessful tricks too. Unsuccessful from the point of view of operators, of course, who considered lost profits.

    With the first statement about network overload, and especially 3G overload, FAS is also not a fact that it agrees. According to analysts of TMT Consulting, unlimited Internet is used, just mainly on 4G / LTE networks and on nightly tariffs, which only slightly loads networks and also teaches users to high connection speeds.

    We users can only wait. Moreover, operators can still “adjust” the return of no-limit at a higher price. And from the point of view of marketing, the “enter unlimited” method has fulfilled its role. Traffic has grown, 4G networks are actively loading, a quarter of new tariff sales fall on unlimited (according to Tele2 director). Moreover, in June the FAS is also considering the case of the agreed price increase of the Big Three for 4G modems. So with the demand for modern smartphones everything is in order and the traffic is growing not on 3G, but on 4G.

    Capacity utilization and the promotional nature of the new tariffs may not be convincing by the FAS, but in general in developed countries (or rather, in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development countries), only in 5 out of 25 European OECD countries, operators offer unlimited mobile Internet. but in these 5 the role of the driver “unlimited” performs well. With it, the consumption of mobile data in Finland, Ireland and Switzerland has become the maximum in Europe. Finnish mobile networks miss 10% more traffic than Germany, although Finns have 15 times less population.

    So, in a sense, the use of unlimited power as a driver and the rejection of it correspond to the world practice of European neighbors, but slightly contradicts the official policy of the Russian authorities on the digital economy and the volume of traffic in other regions of the world. Another thing is that the FAS here is unlikely to greatly affect the situation. As mentioned above, operators can always raise prices for unlimited prices to the prohibitive level. And the cancellation of the tariff, which no one uses, only later will not cause any complaints to the FAS. This is a pessimistic option. But there is also optimistic. In 2011, in South Korea, operators also abandoned no-limit for similar reasons, but returned it in 2013 due to the subsequent slowdown in the market. There, a quarter of the audience uses no limit and eats up 90% of the traffic, but none of the operators are outraged by this.

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