Cellular operators decided to increase the cost of archival tariffs

According to Kommersant, VimpelCom will raise prices for archival tariff plans in the near future. The company promised to warn customers about the upcoming increase in the price of services in advance, so that people could change the tariff plan if necessary.

It is expected that Megafon will raise prices from February. It will be followed by Tele2. When exactly there will be a rise in price, these companies did not report.

Earlier it became known that already in early January, MTS raised tariffs by 60 rubles for the same set of services.

The operator's representatives explained the incident by rising costs, primarily by the rise in the cost of maintaining and building networks. The purchase and delivery of equipment, the cost of electricity, as well as tariffs for the services of external contractors increased the most.

Operators also bear a considerable share of costs in connection with the implementation of the “Yarovaya law” on the mandatory long-term storage of user data. According to the “Yarovaya package”, named after the initiator of the innovation, State Duma deputy Irina Yarovaya, telecom operators are required to store conversations, messages and traffic of subscribers for six months, and for three years - metadata on the reception, transmission, delivery and processing of sms and calls . This law has been in effect since July 1, 2018. In April of this year, a government commission approved a new bill adopted as a continuation of the Yarovaya package. It establishes requirements for owners of technological networks to store data within the "sustainable Internet".

As expected, the legislators' initiative ended up placing a financial burden on the shoulders of taxpayers.

AsInterfax notes, today "all Big Four operators are more interested in the growth of monetization than in increasing the subscriber base." It can be difficult to take the first step in the process of raising tariffs, since all representatives of large networks closely monitor each other and do not dare to raise prices earlier than their competitors. After the MTS company took the first step, the road for the rest was open.

Market participants note that over the past year, the costs of cellular communication providers increased by 10-12%, while tariffs rose only by 2-4%. The main reasons for the increase in costs were rapid inflation, as well as the rapid growth of mobile traffic due to the increase in video viewing.

Earlier it was reported that in January of this year, the consumption of mobile Internet traffic in Russia increased by about 35% compared to the same period last year, and in Moscow the growth was 48.8%.

The largest increase in Internet consumption especially increased in the first days of the new year. In the period from January 1 to January 6, the dynamics of mobile Internet consumption remained practically unchanged. But on January 7, traffic fell by 58%, but starting from January 8, it again reached the indicators of the beginning of the month. Voice traffic grew by 7.7%. At the same time, Internet traffic in Moscow increased by 44.6% on New Year's Eve, while voice traffic decreased by 16.7%. Moscow is in first place in terms of traffic growth, St. Petersburg is in second place, and Stavropol is in third place.

Note that at the end of last year it became known that the short video service TikTok bypassed both Odnoklassniki and Google in terms of attendance in Russia. It has become the most visited site in the world. In early autumn, it became known that the monthly audience of the rapidly gaining popularity of the TikTok network exceeded one billion users.

The researchers note that this year TikTok in Russia showed the highest increase in mobile traffic. Experts attribute the growth of mobile Internet traffic on the TikTok platform to the popularity of vertical video. Other companies are now trying to replicate the success of the Chinese social network.