Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) found MTS guilty of violating the Competition Law due to unreasonable increase of service cost. Under the order of the FAS the mobile operator has to reduce the tariffs "to economically justified level", reads the press-release of the regulator. MTS said it had not received the official order from FAS yet.
According to the FAS, in January MTS increased the cost of cell communications services for more than 28 million subscribers by 9.5% on average. The company explained it by increase of its costs. The FAS specifies that MTS did not provide "evidence of the expenses growth in the amount sufficient to justify the tariff increase".
In August MTS changed its rates again, raising them by 8.4% on average. The rest of the tariffs the operator increased again in September and October by 9.7% on average.
"So, the total increase of tariffs for 28 million subscribers in 2022 was more than 20%, while the consumer price index at the end of August was 10.5%",
the FAS states.
MTS promised to look into the FAS reasons after receiving the official text of the decision.
"When correcting the tariffs the growth of costs for maintenance of telecom-infrastructure was taken into account, which exceeds the growth of incomes from rendering communication services. The Commission was provided with the necessary evidence to confirm this,"
the company's press service said.
TelecomDaily forecasts that by the end of 2022 the growth of prices for mobile and broadband services will amount to 15-18%. Representatives of the operators said that the already held increase in prices was from 2% to 15%, but argue that the increase in any case does not exceed inflation. After the beginning of the hostilities in Ukraine the basic services of foreign roaming in the Russian telecom operators went up by 5-40%, the cost of options - by 40-60%.
Sources: Kommersant, FAS
