Russia and Belarus abolished fees for incoming calls

From April 1, 2022, Russia and Belarus will abolish fees for incoming calls in mobile communication networks. This decision was made at a meeting of the High-Level Group of the Council of Ministers of the Union State.

“The abolition of fees for incoming calls is one of the results of negotiations between the relevant ministries and telecom operators of the Union State. Now there are more than 90 thousand Russian subscribers in Belarus, who will have access to free incoming calls. The Ministry of Digital Development thanks the operators for the fact that at any time the main priority for them is the comfort of subscribers and the availability of communication. We are now continuing to work with the Republic to eliminate all roaming charges in the near future. Then the cost of incoming and outgoing calls when moving between countries for citizens will be equal to the cost of communication within their own country, ”said Dmitry Kim, Deputy Head of the Ministry of Digital Development of the Russian Federation.

Back in November 2020, the interconnect rate (a system of inter-operator mutual settlements for voice traffic transmission services) between Russia and Belarus for roaming calls was reduced from $0.30 to $0.015. Thanks to the reduction of roaming tariffs, the number of subscribers of Russian telecom operators using cellular services in Belarus increased by 15%, the number of incoming calls increased by 1.5 times, outgoing calls – by 2 times. The volume of SMS messages increased by 2 times, and Internet traffic – by 1.6 times.