Mobile operators from the Russian Federation have introduced special tariffs in Israel

In connection with the war in Israel, the main Russian cellular operators have introduced relaxations for their subscribers located in the country. According to company estimates, we are talking about 50 thousand people. But the conditions are very different. VimpelCom was the only one of the Big Four to distribute a free package for 30 days, including to Palestine. Tele2 has made communications in Israel completely free until October 22, with the possibility of extension. At the same time, MTS and MegaFon limited benefits mainly to embassy numbers.

Kommersant interviewed Russian operators about the current conditions for the provision of communication services in roaming in Israel and Palestine. Thus, VimpelCom announced that on October 9 it connected a free package of Internet traffic, voice communications and SMS to customers in Israel and Palestine: “It will be valid for the next 30 days.” Other telecom operators provided benefits only to subscribers in Israel. Tele2 will make all communications in Israel free of charge from October 10, including incoming calls: “The special regime will operate until October 22, with the possibility of extension depending on developments.”

MegaFon reported that “in the near future” the cost of calls for subscribers in Israel will be zeroed out, but only to numbers of emergency services and “Russian embassies in the regions of the Middle East.” MTS said that from October 10 to October 31, they will also make calls to the numbers of the Russian embassies in Israel and Israel in Russia and to the Aeroflot hotline free of charge. A Kommersant source in one of the operators estimated the number of Russian subscribers roaming in Israel and Palestine at “around 50 thousand people for all.”

Operators did not introduce benefits for calls from the Russian Federation to Israel, although foreign companies agreed to this. So, on October 9, SFR announced the opportunity to make free calls to Israel from France, and the American Optimum (both are part of the Altice group, founded by the Israeli-French entrepreneur Patrick Drai) did the same for calls from the United States.

Cellular services in Israel are provided by five operators with their own infrastructure (Pelephone, Cellcom, Partner, Hot Mobile, Golan Telecom), two more (018 XPhone and Rami Levy) – via MVNO. Wataniya and Ooredoo Palestine operate in Palestine. Due to a conflict with Israel over radio frequencies, Palestinian operators began providing 3G communications services only in 2018 and only in the West Bank. Only 2G networks operate in the Gaza Strip.

By the evening of October 9, there were no interruptions in the Internet in Israel, according to data from the IODA project at the Georgia Institute of Technology (USA). Since October 7, Cloudflare has noted an 80-100% increase in traffic on Israeli networks compared to last week. In the Gaza Strip, according to IODA, by the evening of October 9, there were outages on the networks of fixed-line providers Hadara and NewStarMax.

The monitoring group Netblocks reported on October 8 that “the level of connectivity of all operators in the region has dropped to zero.” The maximum level of connectivity by that time was noted on DCC networks (the operator of the Internet core network in Palestine) and amounted to 33% of normal.

The discounts that Russian operators have established for subscribers in Israel and Palestine “are determined to a greater extent by the decision of the company’s management than by the cost of services determined by roaming agreements,” notes one of the market participants. He said that the conditions of the latter directly depend on the number of subscribers visiting the territory of another country. “Each operator has its own conditions, but I think that none has a significant advantage in the number of roaming subscribers in this territory,” adds Kommersant’s interlocutor.

Kommersant’s source explains the fact that almost none of the world’s operators have introduced benefits for calls to Israel by economic losses. He emphasized that roaming is “a low-margin business in itself,” and foreign partners usually set equal conditions for all operators from a particular country.

Yuri Litvinenko