OREANDA-NEWS. November 29, 2010. Since the beginning of 2011, the subscribers of the cellular companies of the Svyazinvest Group are to receive a New Year’s gift – the ability to travel all over the country with the service “National Roaming”.  At present, domestic roaming offered by the Group’s cellular operators does not cost more than intra-network roaming of any of the Big-3 operators. 

The new roaming tariffs will be available for the subscribers of Uralsvyazinform (Utel brand), Baikalvestcom (BWC brand), Eniseytelecom (ETK brand), Nizhny Novgorod Cellular Communication (NCC brand), AKOS (AKOS brand), CenterTelecom (Tambov GSM brand), Far East Telecom (Far East Telecom GSM brand), Wireless Information Technologies (BIT brand).

Effective October 1, 2010, Svyazinvest signed an agreement with one of the Big-3 operators, which makes it possible to review its entire domestic Russian roaming policy.  In accordance with the signed agreement, as of the beginning of 2011, the Group’s cellular companies lowered their subscriber tariffs for national roaming both on a per-minute basis, SMS texting and mobile Internet.  This decrease in price is in no way related to the actions taken by the Federal Anti-Monopoly Service against the Big-3 operators. 

The new tariff parameters are shown in the table below: 

Service

Subscriber tariff in RUR, incl. VAT

Outgoing local calls

9.00

Outgoing long-distance calls made in Russia

9.00

Incoming calls

9.00

SMS

4.00

GPRS per 1 Mb

20.00

On average, a 3-fold decrease in tariffs for domestic Russian roaming will allow subscribers not to change operators during trips outside their regions and to feel like the clients of a uniform operator even before the merger process between RTOs and Rostelecom is complete. 

“This innovation is another step on the road to a unified operator. Our companies have made concerted efforts to improve roaming conditions for their subscribers.  As early as the New Year, our subscribers will be able to travel around Russia with the SIM cards of their companies, without worrying about high prices.  Moreover, companies are preparing to introduce additional tariff options for frequent roaming subscribers, which will make it possible to considerably reduce per minute billing charges”, says Nadezhda German, head of the department of wireless communication at Svyazinvest.