Russia May Investigate Operator Roaming Fees

Published on: 1st Jan 1970: 1:33am

Russia's Federal Anti-monopoly Service (FAS) has announced that it is considering setting up a formal investigation into the roaming fees charged by the country's big-three mobile networks.

The FAS said that it felt the fees being charged by MTS, Vimpelcom and MegaFon were "unreasonably overpriced."

A statement on the FAS's website said that the investigation would be carried out under Part 1 Article 10 of the Federal Law, which relates to competition issues.

The FAS said that an analysis of roaming tarrifs carried out by the Interstate Council for Antimonopoly Policy found that roaming rates were 2-2.5 times higher than comparable tariffs offered by other international operators, and 3 to 5 times higher than the European Commission would permit.

According to the Mobile World analysts, the big-three operators control around 87% of the market, having 117.8 million subscribers between them.

On the web: Federal Anti-monopoly Service - The Mobile World

 

Tags: [federal anti-monopoly service]  [fas]  [roaming]  [vimplecom]  [megafon]  [mts]  [Russia]