Being in another city, cellular subscribers pay much more for calls than usual. This is due to the presence of roaming, which is set by operators. However, recently the head of the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications announced that roaming within the country could be canceled.
In his Twitter, Nikolai Nikiforov, who holds the post of head of the Ministry of Communications and Mass Media of Russia, wrote about the preparation of a new law "On Communications", which plans to abolish domestic roaming. With its acceptance, a cellular subscriber who finds himself in another region of our country will not have to overpay for calls to local numbers - the cost of calls in this case will be regulated by the tariffs of his cellular operator. However, if he calls his hometown or some other city, he will pay the usual long distance rates.
With the adoption of this law, mobile operators will be obliged to abolish roaming within the country, no matter how much they would like to do this. In their opinion, there is every reason for roaming, since the operator is increasing the cost of servicing a subscriber located in another region. According to the current law, the operator is obliged to make such a call through the zone operator, which leads to additional expenses. And the solution to this problem can only be a change in the existing traffic transmission scheme.
As for the tariffication of incoming calls, the representatives of the ministry have not yet given a clear answer to this question. However, they once again noted that all calls, according to the new law, will be paid according to the tariffs of the region in which the subscriber is located. Also, representatives of the ministry assured that the new law will not entail an increase in tariffs in the "home" network.
In 2010, State Duma deputies have already made an attempt to abolish domestic roaming. They offered to make a single tariff regardless of the location of the subscriber. However, the Ministry of Telecom and Mass Communications returned such a project for revision, since its approval could cause significant losses to mobile operators. This time Nikolay Nikiforov assured that the new law will give advantages to both consumers and operators.
