Cell operators have time to fulfill roaming warning till Dec 15

MOSCOW, Aug 22 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service has extended the time given to the country’s four biggest mobile operators – MTS, MegaFon, VimpelCom, and T2 RTK Holding – to execute a warning on intra-network roaming by December 15, and the companies are ready to obey, the authority said on Tuesday in a statement.

“All connection operators, to whom the antimonopoly service had issued a warning, expressed readiness to fulfil it and submitted to the Federal Antimonopoly Service an application to prolong the timeframe. After studying the motivated applications, the antitrust authority set a new deadline to respect the warning for all the connection operators until December 15,” the service said.

The operators should report to the service on a monthly basis on the process of fulfilling the warning. “The antimonopoly service believes that the execution of the warning will help shape a single telecommunications space and respect rights of all subscribers on the territory of the Russian Federation,” the authority said.

In mid-July, the service disapproved of setting and maintaining different tariffs in home and other regions of the country by the top four national operators. The watchdog asked the companies to mend the discrepancy by August 13.

The authority revealed that when travelling across the country, but still being covered by services of the same operator, subscribers pay differently than in their home region. The more expensive is the tariff plan, the less is the difference in prices.

MegaFon went to court at first to complain about the warning, but then withdrew its lawsuit.

The service earlier said that it had received a motivated petition from an unnamed operator to prolong the period of fulfilling the warrant and an expressed readiness to obey within a new timeframe. The authority satisfied the request and extended the period until December 15 for this operator and said that it could open cases against the other three.

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