UPDATE: Moscow antitrust finds MTS guilty of violating advert law

(Adds comments from MTS in last two paragraphs)

MOSCOW, Feb 5 (PRIME) -- A commission of the Moscow branch of Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service has found mobile operator MTS guilty of violating the law with advertisements of its Smart tariff, the authority said Friday.

The advertisement read that MTS provided gigabytes of the Internet and an option to make unlimited calls across the whole country.

The older tariff, also named Smart, available for subscription until October 2014, was rebranded into Smart 052013, and was not subject to the campaign. The advertised options were active only for users who had recently joined the tariff, the authority said.

“One of the users of the older tariff Smart lost more than 1,000 rubles within a couple of days due to being misled, because the user was unaware of invalidity of the advertised options on the tariff exploited,” the service said.

An MTS spokesperson said that a notice about the renaming of the tariff in September 2014 was enough for the consumer to understand details of the company’s policy on rebranding tariffs.

MTS’s press secretary Dmitry Solodovnikov said that the operator is waiting for the publication of the authority’s documents, after which the company will decide on an appeal.

“In an advertisement of any operator, if necessary, one can find signs of incompliance with the law on advertising due to complicated specifics of the promoted product,” he said.

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