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State Duma requests FAS to look into the price of mobile phone calls to Crimea

Cellular phone communication companies' subscribers pay for their phone conversations between Crimea and the rest of Russia on the basis of international tariffs

© ITAR-TASS/Stanislav Krasilnikov

MOSCOW, April 30 /ITAR-TASS/. Cellular phone communication companies' subscribers pay for their phone conversations between Crimea and the rest of Russia on the basis of international tariffs, even if a call is between subsidiaries of one and the same operator.

Such a state of affairs angered Alexei Zhuravlyov, State Duma Member from the United Russia party, and he sent an appropriate enquiry to the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS), the newspaper Izvestia writes on Wednesday.

Zhuravlyov requests FAS "to look into validity of tariffs on cellular phone communication between Russia's new regions (Crimea and Sevastopol) and the rest of the country. Russia's mobile phone communication operators currently rate such phone calls as international communication," the newspaper points out.

More than a month has passed since the signing of the treaty on Crimea's re-unification with Russia but cellular phone communication operators have not readjusted their operations, the MP laments.

At present, Russian cellular phone operators are lacking communication networks of their own on the Crimean Peninsula. They provide services there via Ukrainian partners that have licenses for mobile communication in that country. However, the MTS and VympelCom have their own subsidiaries there "MTS Ukraine" and "KievStar", respectively. Services for Megafon subscribers are provided in the networks of outside partners.

Meanwhile, FAS, for its part, told Izvestia that the MP's enquiry had not reached it yet.

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