Russian national roaming canceled

From June 1, 2019, the Federal Law №527-FZ «On Amendments to Articles 46 and 54 of the Federal Law «On Communications» dated 27.12.2018 comes into force, according to which domestic national roaming is canceled, i.e. operators of mobile radio-telephone communication are obliged to establish equal terms in their networks for the provision of services to each subscriber, regardless of the region of his/her/its location.

Cellular operators have already begun to offer tariff plans that allow you to call throughout the country like in home network. Payment over the limit of the tariff plan will also be paid according to tariffs of the home network. Calls outside of Russia are payable at roaming rates.

As exception from these rules are the Sakhalin region and Chukotka Autonomous District, where all four major cellular operators are missing and mainly satellite communications are used, as well as the Republic of Crimea and the federal city Sevastopol, where only four local operators provide communication services. Calls to other regions will be more expensive in these territorial subjects of Russia, because the offsets for connections of the Big Four operators will not work in this case.

According to the Ministry of Digital Development, Communications and Mass Communications of the RF (Minkomsvyaz), there were almost 229 million active mobile subscribers in Russia as of October 1, 2018, of which almost 128 million use Internet access services. For the first 9 months of 2018, the volume of cellular communication services amounted to 349,6 billion rubles, that is 8,6% less than for the corresponding period of 2017.