Games of operators of communication with fire: for what and how does FAS penalize
Some time ago, our attention was chained to itself by “small fonts” in the advertising promises of operators. A year later, we decided to resume the study of marketing practices of colleagues, but gradually went the other way.
The push to a new portion of parsing the mistakes of others was given by a recent case of the Federal Antimonopoly Service against Rostelecom - the company used the word "unlimited" in the tariff, with speed limits after the user exceeded a certain amount of traffic. This practice is popular with regional operators, as well as mobile operators in the tariffs for mobile Internet.
In the open database of the FAS, complaints and prescriptions in the field of communications can be divided into three categories:
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The Nizhny Novgorod branch of Rostelecom , which pursued, of course, the noble goal of informing subscribers about methods of protection against malicious software, did not find anything more convenient than setting automatic redirection of users to an anti-virus advertising page. However, according to the law, “the distribution of advertising over telecommunication networks, including through the use of telephone, facsimile, and mobile radiotelephone communications, is allowed only with the prior consent of the subscriber or addressee to receive advertising”. The company was sentenced to a fine - 110 thousand rubles.
MGTS came under the punitive sword of justice for “spam” with a proposal to change the long-distance carrier in favor of MTS, Akado — the capital (for which he received a fine of 300 thousand rubles), the Nizhny Novgorod MTS (fine of 40 thousand rubles). According to representatives of the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service, operators often prescribe in their contracts with subscribers that they “inform subscribers of new services and company promotions,” which is why it is not always possible to prove a violation.
A complaint with the FAS is often one of the tools that competitors struggle with each other. We omit the inter-operator quarrels and recall (this has already been written on Habré) about the litigation between Net by Net and Akado.
In 2008, the Net by Net provider for unambiguous postcards was fined 40 thousand rubles “The Internet does not work KAK NADO? Take Net by Net forever. ” Interestingly, the amount of the fine turned out to be 25 times less than Net by Net costs for launching the campaign, and the effect of the media scandal spread by the media about the operator scandal attracted even more attention to Net by Net.
The brightest stories of this section are the opposition of the monopolist + city administration cartel. Not so long ago, the market was shaken by two major cases - in Yekaterinburg and the Republic of Tatarstan, the city authorities made an order to remove air lines under the ground. On the one hand, the view of the city will be better, on the other hand, cables that have been thrown illegally will disappear. “A noble undertaking” again did not meet enthusiasm for anyone except cable channel owners - all the other market participants promised this only additional costs - for operators to rent sewers, and as a result - for subscribers of communication services (according to FAS estimates, the cost of Internet access services in Tatarstan would have grown by 30%).
Svedlovskiy OFAS was punished by Rostelecom for unauthorized replacement of the MTT long-distance operator, previously selected by subscribers, with itself. Rostelecom was obliged to transfer to the budget the income received as a result of the violation (this amount amounted to 630 thousand rubles).
A typical case in the regions is a complaint about the exorbitantly high rate of Sibirtelecom for other operators about sharing the subscriber line and subscription fee for operators when their subscribers are connected to the Internet using xDSL technology in comparison with tariffs for their own subscribers. The company's actions were deemed discriminatory due to its dominant presence in the market and were evaluated by the antimonopoly service at 1 million rubles.
FAS is also actively fighting to reduce the gap in the cost of services in different cities of the country. Dalsvyaz (for 5100 percent difference between Internet tariffs in the capital and Sakhalin region), UTK (for the difference in prices between Rostov-on-Don and rural areas of the region by 2 times, the penalty - 297 thousand rubles) hit antimonopolists Uralsvyazinform (for setting tariffs in Ugra, unreasonably exceeding the sum of expenses and profits necessary for the production and sale of services, being the dominant operator in the region).
A corporate complaint came to TVT TV and Radio Company - the company decided to charge for the extension of the contract for the provision of telephone services. Zakhotev enriched by the extra 1200 rubles per subscriber per year, the company eventually lost 3.8 million.
North-West Telecom applied another trick - the operator demanded payment from subscribers at the same time in advance and post-payday.
Megafon was fined 42 million for imposing the SuperAON paid service on subscribers. According to the head of the Rostov FAS, such a fine was set to stop the growing practice of mobile operators to connect services without demand. However, if we consider that the SuperAON service was connected to a million subscribers in the Rostov region, and its cost was 90 rubles per month - Megafon, in general, did not lose anything.
Well, in order not to despair, they say that everything is unfair here, we are preparing to analyze what is happening with foreign colleagues. And there cartel intricacies are no less intricate.
The push to a new portion of parsing the mistakes of others was given by a recent case of the Federal Antimonopoly Service against Rostelecom - the company used the word "unlimited" in the tariff, with speed limits after the user exceeded a certain amount of traffic. This practice is popular with regional operators, as well as mobile operators in the tariffs for mobile Internet.
In the open database of the FAS, complaints and prescriptions in the field of communications can be divided into three categories:
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1. Violations in the field of advertising
The Nizhny Novgorod branch of Rostelecom , which pursued, of course, the noble goal of informing subscribers about methods of protection against malicious software, did not find anything more convenient than setting automatic redirection of users to an anti-virus advertising page. However, according to the law, “the distribution of advertising over telecommunication networks, including through the use of telephone, facsimile, and mobile radiotelephone communications, is allowed only with the prior consent of the subscriber or addressee to receive advertising”. The company was sentenced to a fine - 110 thousand rubles.
MGTS came under the punitive sword of justice for “spam” with a proposal to change the long-distance carrier in favor of MTS, Akado — the capital (for which he received a fine of 300 thousand rubles), the Nizhny Novgorod MTS (fine of 40 thousand rubles). According to representatives of the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service, operators often prescribe in their contracts with subscribers that they “inform subscribers of new services and company promotions,” which is why it is not always possible to prove a violation.
A complaint with the FAS is often one of the tools that competitors struggle with each other. We omit the inter-operator quarrels and recall (this has already been written on Habré) about the litigation between Net by Net and Akado.
In 2008, the Net by Net provider for unambiguous postcards was fined 40 thousand rubles “The Internet does not work KAK NADO? Take Net by Net forever. ” Interestingly, the amount of the fine turned out to be 25 times less than Net by Net costs for launching the campaign, and the effect of the media scandal spread by the media about the operator scandal attracted even more attention to Net by Net.
2. Unfair competition and restriction of competition
The brightest stories of this section are the opposition of the monopolist + city administration cartel. Not so long ago, the market was shaken by two major cases - in Yekaterinburg and the Republic of Tatarstan, the city authorities made an order to remove air lines under the ground. On the one hand, the view of the city will be better, on the other hand, cables that have been thrown illegally will disappear. “A noble undertaking” again did not meet enthusiasm for anyone except cable channel owners - all the other market participants promised this only additional costs - for operators to rent sewers, and as a result - for subscribers of communication services (according to FAS estimates, the cost of Internet access services in Tatarstan would have grown by 30%).
Svedlovskiy OFAS was punished by Rostelecom for unauthorized replacement of the MTT long-distance operator, previously selected by subscribers, with itself. Rostelecom was obliged to transfer to the budget the income received as a result of the violation (this amount amounted to 630 thousand rubles).
A typical case in the regions is a complaint about the exorbitantly high rate of Sibirtelecom for other operators about sharing the subscriber line and subscription fee for operators when their subscribers are connected to the Internet using xDSL technology in comparison with tariffs for their own subscribers. The company's actions were deemed discriminatory due to its dominant presence in the market and were evaluated by the antimonopoly service at 1 million rubles.
FAS is also actively fighting to reduce the gap in the cost of services in different cities of the country. Dalsvyaz (for 5100 percent difference between Internet tariffs in the capital and Sakhalin region), UTK (for the difference in prices between Rostov-on-Don and rural areas of the region by 2 times, the penalty - 297 thousand rubles) hit antimonopolists Uralsvyazinform (for setting tariffs in Ugra, unreasonably exceeding the sum of expenses and profits necessary for the production and sale of services, being the dominant operator in the region).
3. Violation of consumer rights
A corporate complaint came to TVT TV and Radio Company - the company decided to charge for the extension of the contract for the provision of telephone services. Zakhotev enriched by the extra 1200 rubles per subscriber per year, the company eventually lost 3.8 million.
North-West Telecom applied another trick - the operator demanded payment from subscribers at the same time in advance and post-payday.
Megafon was fined 42 million for imposing the SuperAON paid service on subscribers. According to the head of the Rostov FAS, such a fine was set to stop the growing practice of mobile operators to connect services without demand. However, if we consider that the SuperAON service was connected to a million subscribers in the Rostov region, and its cost was 90 rubles per month - Megafon, in general, did not lose anything.
Well, in order not to despair, they say that everything is unfair here, we are preparing to analyze what is happening with foreign colleagues. And there cartel intricacies are no less intricate.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/150936/
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