ABOLISHING ROAMING IN RUSSIA IS RECOGNIZED THE BEST FAS CASE

FAS Presidium recognized the case on abolishing roaming as the best case investigated by FAS Central Office in 2018. The Federal Antimonopoly Service won the contest of the World Bank – ICN.

The results of the two stages of the work undertaken by theAntimonopoly Service to abolish roaming was significantly reduced costs of communications services to the “home” level during travels across the Russian Federation.

The costs dropped down on average by 2 - 10 times per operator depending on services when subscribers traveled and were in the networks of other providers, while prices for sms, data transfer and outbound voice connections in travels within the “home” operator network were set at the same level as in the home region.

Deputy Head of FAS Anatoly Golomolzin commented: “According to the National Plan for Developing Competition in Russia in 2018-2020, approved by an order of the President of the Russian Federation, the expected result for the “Telecommunications” sector is eliminating unreasonable tariff difference for mobile communications services in travels across Russia”.

“Unity of telecommunications space means not only technical possibility of interaction between telecommunications networks. Perceiving the common telecommunications space of the Russian Federation by consumers is essential”,added Head of FAS Department for Regulating Communications and Information Technologies, Elena Zaeva.

FAS wonthe contest of the World Bank – ICN under the theme for “Promoting competitive digital infrastructure, digital platforms and digital finance” with its project on “Abolishing national and intra-network roaming”.

After deciding on the awards, he World Bank placed a comment about FAS achievement on its official web site:

“The Federal Antimonopoly Service of Russia (FAS) conducted an advocacy initiative to map and tackle restrictive regulations and anticompetitive behavior regarding roaming services in the country. Based on its findings, the FAS engaged with both public and private stakeholders to (i) promote adequate regulation for interconnection between operators regarding national roaming charges, as well as (ii) to dissuade firms to abuse dominant positions by charging roaming fees from its own subscribers from different regions – including notifying players about a potential illegal conduct or even initiating enforcement cases. As a result, market players voluntarily changed their national roaming practices and dropped prices dramatically: between 2017 and 2018, fees for SMS reduced up to 2.5 times, for voice services up to 5 times, and for internet access up to 10 times. In December 2018, the Federal Law № 527-FZ amending the Federal Law on Communications was issued building on key FAS recommendations”.

On 1 June 2019, the Federal Law “On amendments to the Law “On Communications” came into effect, that formalizes operators’ obligation to set unified tariff-setting conditions for travels when subscribers are in the network of their operator and provide free inbound voice connections when subscribers are in the networks of any operator in the territory of the Russian Federation. Now there is no need to worry travelling to Crimea since all calls will be received free-of-charge like in any other regions of Russia.

Head of FAS Igor Artemiev pointed out that the efforts in this direction will continue:

“The issue with national roaming in Russia is sorted out. In spite of companies’ complaints about expected losses, they benefited from abolished roaming due to the increased traffic. Also a federal law was passed that buried forever the story with roaming in the Russian Federation. We are for abolishing roaming in EAEU, but first of all, it should be done within the Union State of Russia and Belarus”.