VK Mobile Vkontakte Vkontakte Vkontakte Operator turned out to be a branded megaphone tariff

The VK Mobile, the VK Mobile, launched the other day, is actually a branded tariff of MegaFon, the Vedomosti newspaper writes.

As follows from the materials of Megafon and VKontakte, the Big Three operator will provide communication services under the VK Mobile traffic sign and we are not talking about receiving a social network of a separate license for the provision of communication services.

As the press secretary of the social network Yevgeny Krasnikov explained, at this stage VK Mobile is part of the Megafon structure, but all decisions related to the product and user experience are made together with the VKontakte team. According to him, legally VK Mobile subscribers are really customers of Megafon, but at the same time they receive a unique service from the social network, which is available only to them.

Recall that the VK Mobile tariff offers subscribers free conversations among themselves, while calls to the numbers of other operators, including Yota and Megaphone, which use the same infrastructure, will cost 1.6 rubles per minute (one SMS message will cost the same amount). The VKontakte Internet traffic for subscribers will be free, and the monthly traffic limit outside the social network will be 2 GB. Also, VK Mobile to customers promised a free subscription to the Boom music application, which launched at the end of April 2017. The VK Mobile subscription fee is 399 rubles per month, however, when requesting a SIM card, you need to pay 450 rubles - this amount will go to the account. If desired, the user can connect to VK Mobile with an old number or choose a new one.

According to the general director of TMT Consulting Konstantin Ankilov, this tariff is quite competitive, since the monthly fee is close to ARPU (average monthly revenue per subscriber). At the same time, the minuses of the tariff include the need to pay for voice calls, even to the numbers of MegaFon subscribers.

In turn, the Telecom Daily CEO Denis Kuskov noted that VKontakte has a young audience that Megafon’s offer may be interested in, but by and large a set of services of VK MOBILE on the price or composition does not seem more profitable than the existing offers of operators and the same Megaphone.

Commenting on partners' refusal to launch a full -fledged virtual operator (MVNO), Ankilov noted that creating a branded tariff is easier and cheaper than investing in the launch of MVNO, and for Russian operators this is far from the first such case.