FAS demands to reduce tariffs for international roaming and cancel roaming in the Customs Union

Photo: Oleg Gritsaenko / RBC

According to the head of the Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia Igor Artemyev, the tariffs for international roaming should be reduced at least twice, and roaming should be canceled on the territory of the Customs Union. This statement was made by the head of department on June 11, writes RBC.

Now the Customs Union includes five states: Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia, Kyrgyzstan. “There should be no roaming inside this whole space. This is our goal, ”said Artemyev.

The head of the FAS believes that the prices paid by Russian citizens for roaming outside the country are “degrading”. “These prices, as well as the prices for the corresponding Internet traffic and SMS messages, should decrease by several times: not by 20%, but at least twice,” commented the situation to Artemyev. He also said that the FAS received support on this issue in the government, including the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media.
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Telecom operators in Russia have indicated their willingness to reduce the cost of roaming services.

So, Dmitry Petrov, director of work with the legislative and executive power of MegaFon, said that the company "supports the main approaches to fair roaming, which were proposed by FAS at the end of last year, and expects that the operator community of the CIS countries and other interested countries will work together to implement them. "

“We are ready to work on reducing the cost of roaming services, but everything will depend on our roaming partners,” commented MTS Dmitry Solodovnikov. According to Solodovnikov, in the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, MTS has reduced the cost of calls from domestic users by 60-70%. "However, due to the depreciation of the ruble against the dollar and the euro and, consequently, the rising cost of roaming services in some countries where the flow of tourists is not so great, we were forced to change prices upwards," added Solodovnikov.

The representative of VimpelCom, Anna Aybasheva, said that the company “is always open for interaction with the regulator: to further increase the availability of roaming services, first of all, it is necessary to solve a number of problems in inter-operator cooperation”.