National roaming abolished in Russia

Moscow: The Russian State Duma has adopted a law abolishing national roaming for cellular communications in the Russian Federation.

According to the initiative, Russian telecom operators set the same conditions for mobile services to all customers regardless of their region within Russia.

At the same time, customers pay for telephone connections established with the number they called outside the territory of the Russian Federation. The law is expected to come into force on June 1, 2019.

In August 2017, the antitrust watchdog obliged Russian telecom operators of the Big Four (VimpelCom, Megafon, MTS and Tele2) to remove sharp differences in tariffs for calls in the home region and during trips around the country.

The national roaming is effective when telecom operators have no network in a specific region and have to pay other operators for using their networks, leading to a significant difference in communication prices in comparison with the home region.

The problem with the prices for roaming in Crimea existed because big Russian operators have not entered the region due to sanctions.