Mobile Phone Giant Hears Call to Pay

However, if the change is “consumer-friendly” on the one hand, on the other it will prove inconvenient for those with direct-dial numbers, most of whom will now have to pay to divert incoming calls. These and other changes resulting from an amendment to Russia’s telecommunication laws were discussed at a MegaFon press conference on Wednesday.

Having brought the CPP principle into effect, the new amendment will ban direct-dial numbers and therefore directly affect the interests of 700,000 of St. Petersburg’s MegaFon subscribers and 200,000 from other areas of the Northwest.

According to the new law, from July 1 those direct-dial numbers with the city ABC code (812) will be given a “federal” DEF code (921) instead.

According to Alexander Volkov, director of MegaFon Northwest, direct-dial numbers have always been additional to DEF-code numbers but “maybe some subscribers just did not know that.” Having obtained a license as a local and intra-zone operator MegaFon will nevertheless continue to render services to their direct-dial clients.

Starting from Saturday, subscribers who used to pay a monthly fee for the privilege of having a direct-dial number will also have to pay for the diversion of incoming calls, though the first 100 minutes are free.

“We offer a free 100 minutes of diversion each month. According to the statistics, now, on average, subscribers get only 30 minutes of incoming calls each month. We multiplied that number by three in an effort to ease the process for our clients, allowing them to receive all of their incoming traffic.

A limit of 100 minutes was also introduced in order to prevent the inevitable cases of fraud,” Volkov said.

MegaFon subscribers will have to pay for the diversion of calls originating from ABC numeration, while all incoming calls from mobile phones will be free to both direct-dial and DEF-codes.

For text messages, only DEF-code numbers will be available, while call rates will remain the same, Volkov said.

“Nobody knows for sure how the new rules will affect the mobile market,” Volkov said.

“Personally I believe that it is mobile operators who will suffer more than clients,” he said.

Having invested $10 million in new equipment, MegaFon is aiming to enter the market of fixed-line telephony and provide their subscribers a full range of services and technological solutions, mainly focusing on corporate clients.

Moreover, the company forecasts that demand for direct-dial numbers will rise because of a new economic factor — local telephone subscribers will only be able to call ABC-code direct dial numbers for free.

In other cases, for their outgoing calls to DEF-code mobile numbers local subscribers will have to pay as for long-distance calls.