Azerbaijan, Baku, Dec.14 / Trend H. Veliyev /
Ukrainian mobile operator lowers the cost of incoming calls to Azerbaijan, the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine said.
The operator said about it in a letter to the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine, which indicates that the operator is planning to lower cost of incoming calls to Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and other countries by 40 percent.
At present, the cost of outgoing calls for subscribers of "Kyivstar" to the above mentioned countries is 35 UAH / min (1 hryvna 0.1003 manat), incoming - 40 UAH / min.
Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine in late September recommended mobile operators to bring tariffs for roaming services to the reasonable level. The planned reduction of tariffs for roaming in the CIS countries also was announced by "MTS-Ukraine".
This issue has become more urgent after the recent decision by Russian mobile operators (MTS, VimpelCom and MegaFon), who initiated substantially reduce tariffs for roaming services until Dec.1.
The question put before the Russian mobile operators, has been considered within the international cooperation of antimonopoly organizations of the CIS countries. This will allow making a common strategy to reduce tariffs for inter-operator calls in the post-Soviet space.
An identical strategy is used in the EU countries, where inter-operator roaming tariffs are regulated by the European Commission, which allows setting low prices for customers inside the EU.
Roaming tariffs are formed at the expense of the prices of inter-operator connections with roaming partners, reduction of which will allow serving roaming subscribers at affordable prices.
Azerbaijani Communications and Information Technologies Ministry has already offered to mobile operators in the country several options of phased reduction of roaming tariffs.
According to the head of Department of Finance, Accounting and Economic analysis of the Azerbaijani Ministry of Communications and Information Technologies Rashad Nabiyev, operators were offered to begin with tariff reductions for the CIS countries.
Azerbaijan's mobile operators considered it reasonable to begin with regulating inter-operator connections. According to them, in the CIS countries there are operators, that is very easy to agree with them on those or other services, and there are operators that it is extremely difficult to agree with them.
"The key to success in Europe is the fact that regulation is not only the final tariff for the users, but also inter-operator connections. We believe that, despite the fact that unfortunately the CIS countries have not such interaction and, consequently, regulatory mechanisms yet, the CIS can serve as a platform, based on which one could do a lot for the effective regulation of roaming tariffs," Nabiyev said.
At present, a working group has been created, which will address issues of tariff reduction on roaming services, provided by mobile operators within the Regional Commonwealth in the field of Communications (RCC). Making a decision within such an organization can give its effect, as the administrations of communications that are part of this organization have influence levers on mobile operators.
