St Pete operator says 8% tariff rise not to cover data law expenses

ST. PETERSBURG, May 30 (PRIME) -- A rise in tariffs by 8% announced earlier by St. Petersburg connection operator Komfortel will not cover expenses on the execution of the data retention law, the firm’s General Director Dmitry Petrov said on Wednesday.

“We raised (tariffs) by 8%. The figure is somewhere between the calculated one and the one off the mark. Because in order to repay the expenses as we see them now to fulfil the law, an 8% rise will not be enough,” Petrov said.

In order to respect the law, the company “should abandon three annual profits.” Most of Komfortel’s clients are medium-sized and big businesses, meaning they are “well-paying clients with a small volume of consumption”, Petrov said. The company’s ratio of revenue to the expenses on the law is not so huge unlike the operators servicing households.

“Fulfilment of the law is impossible without raising prices for end-consumers, it is economically impossible. It’s absurd to take a net profit for several years and give it on the implementation of the law,” Petrov said.

The government ordered connection operators, both mobile and fixed-line, to store voice information and text messages for six months from July 1. Connection operators providing telematics services and data transfer services must fully keep users’ messages for 30 days from October 1.

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