Operators refuse tariffs with unlimited Internet

Mobile operators refuse tariffs and options with unlimited Internet: MTS from August 27 reduces the subscribers of the Tarifichi plan a package of the Internet, a day earlier, Tele2 closed the connection to the “A lot of Internet” tariffs. According to Izvestia, due to the Internet consumption of Internet consumption, the operators will soon raise the price of unlimited tariffs by 15–20%.

What's happened

One of the most famous MTS tariffs, launched in 2018, Tarifichi is modified. Initially, it cost 650 rubles a month and included unlimited mobile Internet, 500 minutes of voice communications and 500 SMS. Two years later, its price increased from 650 to 750 rubles. From August 27, the tariff will still rise in price: if the user wants to use unlimited Internet, he will have to pay 50–75 rubles or agree to a traffic restriction of 30 GB.

The press service of MTS explained the changes by the fact that the vast majority of subscribers of unlimited tariffs use only 12-15 GB of the Internet. However, not only MTS cuts tariffs with unlimited Internet.

The Tele2 operator on August 26 closed the “A lot of Internet” service to connect - the tariff allows you to use unlimited Internet for 200 rubles a month, including on trips to Russia. Users already connected to the tariff will continue to use it, but the operator will no longer connect new customers to it. The press service of Tele2 “Izvestia” explained that unlimited tariffs lead to excessively high loads on the network.

Operators are reduced even by partial unlimited access, for example, to social networks. Sbermobail eliminated the use of VKontakte from social networks, which does not take into account traffic.

In Megafon, Yota and VTB Mobail, they do not plan to cancel unlimited tariffs and options in the near future, they told Izvestia in the press services of the operators.

What is important to know

The average cost of mobile phone tariffs with unlimited Internet in Russia from December 2019 to July 2020 has already grown by 47%, to 887.5 rubles, follows the report of the Content Review agency. At the same time, Russia remains a country with a cheap Internet (in the ranking of countries with the cheapest unlimited, the country took third place after Kazakhstan and Poland). In every fifth country of the world, operators abandon unlimited tariffs - such tariffs overload the networks, and the operators now sell them and present them as a premium service.

AC & M managing partner Mikhail Alekseev told Kommersant that cheap unlimited tariffs were weapons of competitive wars of Russian operators in 2018-2019, but now the involvement of new subscribers has ceased to be a priority task. “The market entered the level of preliminary saturation,” the expert explained.

As Denis Kuskov, Director General of Telecomdaily, adds to Izvestia, unlimited subscribers (although they make up only 7-8% of the total users) more than the rest. Some subscribers of unlimited tariffs deliberately “pumped out” everyone in a row, as a result of which they scored channels and created difficulties for other users, says Sergey Polovnikov, head of Content Review. According to his estimates, 10% of such subscribers can generate up to 90% of traffic on mobile operators.

What's next

Those users who do not want to count gigabytes should prepare for the rise in price of operator services. As the leading analyst Mobile Research Group Eldar Murtazin predicts, the first jump in the price should be expected in September of this year - by 15–20%.