Report: Russian antitrust wants intl roaming tariffs cut by 2017

MOSCOW, May 20 (PRIME) -- International roaming tariffs for subscribers of Russian operators can decrease in 2016, business daily Vedomosti reported late Thursday, citing Igor Artemyev, director of the Federal Antimonopoly Service.

“We have a group, comprising 22 countries, including European ones, where talks are being held between our companies and theirs. We will insist (on cutting roaming costs for using SIM cards of Russian operators abroad), and I think it will be the case this year,” Artemyev said.

The internal roaming should be abandoned at all, he said.

Yelena Zayeva, director of the service’s connection and IT department , said the countries in question include the post-Soviet space and a number of the E.U. members – such as Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Slovenia – as well as China and Egypt, which are popular among Russian tourists.

When a subscriber calls home from abroad, the process involves three parties: Russian and foreign mobile operators and a special interconnect operator, providing an international channel of connection, Zayeva said.

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