In connection with inflation – Newspaper Kommersant No. 152 (7353) dated 08/20/2022

At the end of 2022, the growth in prices for mobile and broadband services will be 15-18%, TelecomDaily predicts. Representatives of the operators say that the price increase that has already taken place has ranged from 2% to 15%, but argue that the increase does not exceed inflation in any case. Such an increase, according to experts, will not help to increase the average check to the required extent against the backdrop of an increase in infrastructure costs, which will lead to a decrease in the margins of the operator’s business.

Communication services in Russia for the first half of 2022 have risen in price by an average of 10%, Denis Kuskov, CEO of TelecomDaily, calculated for Kommersant. According to his forecast, by the end of the year, mobile and fixed-line operators will increase the cost of tariffs by another 5-8%.

MTS raised prices depending on the region for most mobile tariffs by 20–60 rubles, Kommersant was told in the company. The cost of archival tariffs for home Internet from the operator increased by about 9%, that is, by about 60 rubles. The change in the cost of services is associated with an increase in the cost of maintaining and building networks, rising prices for electricity and services that the operator purchases from contractors, explained in MTS.

Rostelecom raised prices for home Internet services by an average of 2.5% in the first half of the year, the company says. ER-Telecom (Dom.ru brand) increased prices by 10-15%, the press service specified: “The operator indexes tariffs within inflation every year, before that, for two years due to the pandemic, we did not raise the cost of services “. Akado (part of ER-Telecom) reported that this year they increased the cost of a number of archival tariffs by 2-4%. This only partially covers the operator’s increased costs, the company added.

VimpelCom (Beeline brand) told Kommersant that they did not raise prices “above the values ​​indicated by the regulators.” TransTelecom (TTK) noted that “pricing is related to the cost of the service, which is significantly affected by legislative regulation.” The regional operator Motiv (operating in the Sverdlovsk and Kurgan regions, Khanty-Mansiysk and Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrugs) said that this year they raised prices by 5-10%. MegaFon, Tele2, Skartel (Yota) declined to comment.

In April, the Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) published recommendations to operators, according to which they can raise prices for services by the amount of inflation accumulated since the beginning of the year without conducting inspections and investigations (as of August 1, inflation in Russia in annual terms was 15.3%).

In June, the service, together with the Ministry of Digital Development, decided to check the validity of the sharp increase in Tele2 tariffs, which informed customers about the increase in prices for unlimited packages by almost half – up to 750 rubles. After the start of the test, the operator refused to increase.

Operators this year faced an increase in costs for the technological base, personnel and network infrastructure, the need for import substitution and more complicated logistics for certain types of equipment and components, said Kirill Stroganov, head of commercial development of the Obit operator (works in Moscow and 80 other cities). Many providers practically did not adjust their prices during the two years of the pandemic, says TMT Consulting analyst Irina Yakymenko. “This year they began to gradually raise prices region by region, the range of increases is from 5 rubles. up to 50–100 rubles, for some regional providers it reached 150 rubles. But since indexation does not affect the entire subscriber base of providers, the average market growth of ARPU (revenue per subscriber) is no more than 1–2% per quarter,” explains Ms. Yakimenko.

“The main task of operators is to increase the average check, on which the revenue directly depends,” says Sergey Libin, an analyst at Raiffeisenbank. To do this, according to him, operators introduce new, more expensive tariffs, but with more services, and raise prices for additional ones. This can be called a hidden price increase, it is already difficult to calculate it, Sergei Libin explained. And yet, the average check for the year will grow less than inflation, and the growth in costs may somewhat outpace the growth in revenue, that is, the marginality of the business will decrease, Mr. Libin believes, in connection with which operators will have to more actively reduce costs.

Anastasia Gavrilyuk