Mobile operators are planning to abandon unlimited Internet tariffs

Russian cellular operators may refuse unlimited Internet tariffs in the near future, the agency “Prime” quotes the general director of VimpelCom, Shell Morten Johnsen.

“You will see step by step that the industry will gradually move away from unlimited tariffs. Users with normal data consumption will not see changes, but this disciplines people who use an extremely large amount of data, ”he said.

The CEO of VimpelCom believes that a significant part of subscribers using unlimited mobile tariffs use them in bad faith, siphoning huge amounts of non-stop data through a mobile network.
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It is expected that unlimited tariffs will be replaced by tariffs with a limited but significant amount of included traffic that will satisfy the needs of “bona fide” users. Johnsen notes that 3G networks are already overloaded, and 4G is filling up quickly.

At the same time, the general director of VimpelCom noted that the company cannot apply this practice alone. “I can't do that. But I can voice my position so that it can be heard by the market, ”said Johnsen.

Now many mobile operators provide unlimited access to the Internet for a fixed fee. At the same time, some of them introduce the concept of “fair use”, when, when downloading a certain amount of traffic, it is analyzed by the company's employees (usually when exceeding 100 GB in less than a month). This is done in order to identify users who use these tariff plans collectively or for non-stop downloading / distribution of large amounts of information. In fact, operators limit "unlimited" tariffs, preventing users from managing the service provided to them as they see fit.

Since May of this year, MTS has reserved the right to limit the access speed for its unlimited tariff. According to analysts, only a few percent of subscribers at unlimited tariffs can significantly download the operator’s network and reduce the quality of services provided to other subscribers.

Six months later, Johnsen raises precisely this problem - the limitations of the 3G cellular channel relative to the total number of subscribers does not allow the operator to provide unlimited access services. At the same time, mobile operators recognize that the fact of launching “unlimited” tariffs was used by them more for marketing and public relations than for profit.