Tariffs for cellular communications in Russia will not rise above the level of inflation. Maksut Shadayev, Minister of Digital Development, Telecommunications and Mass Media, informed the Izvestia newspaper about this.
“Tariffs will not rise higher than the consumer price index than inflation. This is recorded in our joint decision with the Federal Antimonopoly Service,” Shadayev said. According to him, the operators really have costs, they increase against the backdrop of zakreditovannosti. “Everything is for cheap communication, but when you cannot index tariffs, you cannot invest in the development of networks,” Shadayev said.
According to him, the inability to index tariffs will not allow financing the development of networks. Shadayev said that now the department’s priority is to make LTE accessible to everyone. “Maybe even in this sense we will win somewhere, the infrastructure will develop more evenly than 5G is now. By the end of 2024, we will sort this out and start doing 5G again.”
Earlier, the Ministry of Digital Transformation announced that it was jointly with the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) checking the validity of a sharp increase in tariffs for the Tele2 operator. In April of this year, “Methodological recommendations for the phased indexation of telecom operators’ tariffs, taking into account the current level of inflation” were developed. In accordance with them, telecom operators can raise tariffs for communication services by the amount of inflation accumulated since the beginning of the year without conducting inspections and investigations. Telecom operators are also obliged to send information about such a change to the antimonopoly body 14 days before the planned change in tariffs.