OREANDA-NEWS. February 25, 2011. FAS Russia made the three largest cellular service providers - “MTS” OJSC, “VympelCom” OJSC and “MegaPhon” OJSC -administratively liable under Article 14.31 of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Violations for abusing market dominance, reported the press-centre of FAS Russia.

According to the determinations issued by FAS Russia:

- “MTS” OJSC is made administratively liable under Article 14.31 of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Violations and is fined 21,892,087 Rubles 94 kopeks;

- “VympelCom” OJSC is made administratively liable under Article 14.31 of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Violations and is fined 12,018,000 Rubles;

- “MegaPhon” OJSC is made administratively liable under Article 14.31 of the Code of the Russian Federation on Administrative Violations and is fined 4,194,042 Rubles.

Earlier, on 22nd October 2010, FAS Russia finalised its investigation of the case against “MTS” OJSC, “VympelCom” OJSC and “MegaPhon” OJSC and found that the companies violated Part 1 Article 10 of the Federal Law “On Protection of Competition”.

The companies fixed and maintained monopolistically high prices for communication services in national and international roaming (the CIS countries) and imposed disadvantageous contract conditions for communication services by failing to properly inform the subscribers about the payment procedures for roaming services in the CIS member-countries.

The cellular service providers executed the determination of the antimonopoly authority in the part of rates reduction by 25th December 2010. As a result, the base subscriber rates in international roaming (the CIS countries), when a subscriber registers in the networks of mobile radio-telephone communications, was reduced:

- for voice information (incoming and outcoming calls) – by 1.5-3 times,

- for transmitting SMS-messages – twofold,

- and for transmitting GPRS data - by 2.5-4 times.

“Determining the fine, the antimonopoly authority took into account the fact that the cell providers agree to voluntarily eliminate the violations”, commented Deputy Head of FAS Russia Anatoly Golomolzin.