Beeline limited the maximum call time to 30 minutes

“Beeline»Limited the maximum duration of a call from an hour to 30 minutes in Moscow. This was told to Vedomosti by several subscribers of the operator and confirmed by a representative of Beeline.

According to one of the subscribers, a 30-minute call restriction appeared in Moscow on May 26, and earlier such a restriction was introduced in a number of other regions, another subscriber added. A representative of Beeline confirmed the information about limiting the maximum length of a call from 60 minutes to 30 in Moscow. In a number of other regions, this timing was in effect before, the company representative added, without specifying which ones. According to him, the operator’s right to determine the length of the connection is enshrined in subscriber contracts.

“This is done in order to protect the company’s customers from unnecessary costs for “sticky” calls that for some reason were not interrupted,” said a Beeline representative. According to the statistics he cited, only 0.6% of the operator’s subscribers regularly make a voice call lasting 30 minutes or more.

Limiting the duration of calls also applies to other telecom operators. For example, in the MegaFon network, a continuous call can last 45 minutes, and over the past year the maximum call duration has not changed, a representative of this operator told Vedomosti. “Now after the automatic break, the vast majority of conversations do not resume, which suggests that the majority of long conversations are unconscious, random,” he added.

“When calling to the networks of other operators, we have a limit of 30 minutes, which is reflected in the conditions for the provision of Tele2 communication services,” a representative of this operator told Vedomosti. When talking within the Tele2 network, there are no restrictions on the duration of a continuous call, he added.

“This was done in order to protect subscribers in a situation where, after the conversation, the subscribers did not complete the call and it is charged or spent from the package. Such situations arise, for example, in the elderly, ”said the representative of Tele2.

Long conversations of subscribers in the general mass are not so common, says Denis Kuskov, founder of TelecomDaily. “I think long-term calls take no more than 2-3% of all conversations in the networks of mobile operators,” he said. In his opinion, operators resort to forced termination of calls not only out of concern for subscribers, but also in order to prevent additional load on their network by calls that turned out to be unfinished by accident. Because ultimately the operator is interested in the subscriber spending more on communication.

Links to protecting subscribers are generally legitimate, but are not the main reason for the forced termination of calls, says analyst Alexei Boyko, author of the ABloud62 Telegram channel. “The first and main reason is the protection of network resources. This is especially true if the operator has tariffs with unlimited on-net calls,” he said.

There are subscribers who can stay in touch for several hours, the expert continued. “For example, this happens among professional drivers. Although the share of such calls is small in absolute terms, they heavily load the network,” Boyko said.

In itself, the issue of protecting networks from congestion for operators is now especially relevant due to refarming (transferring frequencies used in 2G and 3G communication networks to the modern LTE standard) of the 1800 MHz, 2100 MHz and partially 900 MHz bands, the expert noted. “For voice over traditional technology (GSM), operators have a very modest network resource left,” he concluded.