Striving for nil: how the prices for mobile communications have changed in a quarter of a century

As you know, the price of a product is determined primarily by its cost, demand, supply volume and competition. The same can be said about the cost of services, including in the telecom market. Today, a mobile phone in your pocket is such a familiar thing that many have difficulty remembering the times when it was a luxury, and even more so when they were not at all. Why, many have not even found the beginning of the spread of mobile communications in Russia. And if from time to time we are struck by how cell phones looked cumbersome and absurd before, then very few people think about the cost of the communication service itself in the past. But once mobile communication was considered in our country only by very wealthy people.

The first "mobile phones" began to appear in Russia after the collapse of the USSR. In those days, the only means of communication (we will not consider pigeons and mail) was landline phones and numerous payphones. Mobile phones were astronomically expensive, especially against the backdrop of a sharp drop in living standards in the first half of the 1990s. Mobile coverage was very small and was limited at first only to small zones in the largest cities of the country.


Nokia Mobira MD59-NB2, 3 kg live weight. In 1991, the first mobile call in Russia was made on this phone.
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The cost of the mobile communication itself was simply exorbitant - the monthly expenses of subscribers could amount to more than one salary of many Russians (the average salary in Russia in the first half of the 1990s did not exceed $ 20-30). At the same time in those days there was no such thing as the mobile Internet (and the Internet itself, in fact, was still developing). The variety of services was limited to voice and SMS. As you understand, only some businessmen and "brothers" could afford to live so smartly. The number of subscribers was so small that each new client significantly influenced the financial performance of the operator.

A holy place is never empty, and a niche of more affordable mobile communication has been filled ... pagers. Of course, it was a compromise, because the connection was one-way. To respond to a message, you had to find a landline phone number to call the paging company and dictate the answer.



Naturally, the “full-fledged” mobile communication was also changing - new phone models appeared, more compact and cheaper; the cost of a minute of conversation decreased as competition and subscriber bases of operators increased. Since the mid-1990s, the economic situation in the country began to improve, so more and more people could still afford a very expensive pleasure - a mobile phone.

In those years, the mobile market was still far from saturation. Moreover, today's main operators mainly competed for Moscow subscribers, and in most of the largest cities in the country various regional companies ruled. Modern youth is hardly familiar with the name of the MSS - “Moscow Cellular Communication”, although until the late 1990s, this company was the leader in the metropolitan mobile communications market. By the way, in 1998 she was the only one who offered a tariff with free calls within the network. Today it goes without saying, but once people had to pay for the fact that they were called by subscribers of the same operator. For comparison, here are the tariffs for mobile communications in 1996:



The measured course of life was disturbed in the late 1990s, when a number of factors led to a cumulative effect in the form of a very rapid decline in the price of mobile communication:

• There are more affordable phones worth up to $ 200. In 1997, the dollar cost about 6,000 rubles, the average per capita income was 940 thousand rubles, the cost of living was 460 thousand rubles. (this was before the denomination, when three zeros were removed from the ruble notes). In other words, the “affordable” phone cost about an average monthly salary. In January 1998, a denomination was carried out, and a crisis broke out in August. At the end of the year, the dollar was worth about 20 rubles, the average per capita income in the country was 1000 rubles per month.
• Mobile operators began to unite and consolidate.
• The active introduction of GSM-technology, which made it easier and cheaper to increase the subscriber base.

As a result, prices began to fall by leaps and bounds. In 1998, a minute of conversation cost about $ 0.83 (during the year the price for a dollar ranged from 5.9 to 17.4 rubles), in early 1999 - $ 0.55 (the dollar was already 20-25 rubles). And by the end of the year it was possible to talk already for $ 0.18 per minute (that is, at a dollar price of 26.4 rubles. At the end of the year, the cost of the conversation averaged 4.7 rubles / min.). Such a sharp drop was due to the fact that Beeline brought to the market the first “boxed” product - “Bi plus”, which cost only $ 49 (300/1000 rubles before and after the crisis). It included a very cheap mobile phone with a sim card and a prepaid card (the subscriber received $ 10 (600 rubles before the crisis, 2000 after) on the bill). It was a much cheaper pager connection. Competition between operators has intensified.

It was from the end of 1999 that a wide expansion of the Big Three operators began in the regions, which as a result led to today's market division. One of the tools to reduce prices was the active distribution of federal telephone numbers that were cheaper than direct to maintain, and therefore to use. Another important point was the appearance of tariffs with per second charging from the very beginning of the conversation. Previously, operators immediately withdrawn money in the first two or three minutes.

Cheaper tariffs and telephones made mobile communications increasingly affordable. The number of subscribers grew, cellular networks increasingly covered the country. The fight for subscribers forced the operators to continue to reduce prices, although much more slowly. In 2006, the number of SIM-cards in Russia exceeded the number of residents. In the same year, operators were legally banned from charging subscribers for incoming calls.

By 2010, a minute of conversation cost around $ 0.05 (1.5 rubles). At that time it was the lowest in Europe. It would seem, where else is cheaper? However, the market dictated its conditions. The population already has so many mobile phones that the increase in subscribers has naturally slowed down. Many people got 2-3 machines with SIM cards from different operators. And from December 1, 2013, and this was not so important, thanks to the adoption of the law on the portability of telephone numbers .

To meet the market requirements, operators have to regularly introduce new tariffs and offers, change the structure and conditions of existing ones. For example, Yota, which launched a mobile operator into a wide commercial operation less than two years ago, regularly lowers the price of communications. Previously, changes in the cost of packages for smartphones entered into force in 39 regions of Russia, including Moscow and the Moscow Region. These changes were perceived by clients very positively. Previously, we estimated the need of users of each region and made the necessary expansion of packages, taking into account the consumption of customers in each territory. And since April 18, we have reduced the price of services for smartphones in 71 regions of Russia by an average of 35%. The maximum price reduction in some regions was more than 70%. The latest wave of changes in service packages has affected both new and existing Yota customers in 33 regions of the North-West, Far East, and South. So if it seems to you that you have begun to spend a bit too much on a mobile connection, go to www.yota.ru - you may find an interesting offer there.