The telecom operator had to pay its costs.
The Federal Antimonopoly Service found MTS guilty of setting monopolistically high prices for communication services. It is established that in 2022, services for the operator’s subscribers increased by more than 20%.
According to Interfax, the increase in the cost of services affected 28 million subscribers. It all started in January 2022 – services have risen in price by 9.5%. Then MTS explained everything simply: it was necessary to pay its own costs.
In August, MTS re-increased the cost for part of the tariff plans. On average, by 8.4% at once.
And the remaining tariffs rose in September and October by an average of 9.7%.
The increase occurred by a total of 20% at the level of the consumer price index as of the end of August of 10.5%.
“The operator did not provide evidence of the growth of expenses in the amount sufficient to justify the increase in tariffs to the department,” the FAS said in a statement.
Antimonopoly authorities have opened a case against MTS. The company was found guilty of violating the law on protection of competition.
The company now faces a fine – the amount of it will be established during the administrative investigation.
Now the FAS has obliged MTS to reduce tariffs for services to an economically reasonable level.
As Topnews wrote earlier, in August 2020, MTS began to close unlimited tariffs for subscribers. The company explained that they made such a decision based on the analysis of the database.