Why did VimpelCom propose to legally limit the number of SIM cards per passport?

There is a tradition in the Russian telecommunications market: if you cannot prevent the development of a new bill, you need to lead it. Probably guided, among other things, by this logic, VimpelCom proposed to legally limit the number of SIM cards that can be registered on one passport. As the company’s CEO Alexander Torbakhov explained, “the problem of gray SIM cards risks developing into a real disaster in the near future if it continues to be ignored.”

This statement is not without foundation: despite the measures taken by the state, business and security forces to combat telephone fraud, its scale is growing (see Kommersant on March 22). In 2024, senators and legislators started talking about tightening the circulation of SIM cards and verifying subscribers with the participation of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, and control over the transfer of bank cards to third parties is being discussed. In this context, VimpelCom’s initiative even looks mild: if operators introduce self-restrictions on the sale of SIM cards, most likely they will not need to spend money on building additional channels for verification.

Currently, Russian legislation does not set a threshold for owning active SIM cards; any number of SIM cards can be registered with one passport data. As a rule, citizens do not require hundreds of numbers, at most for an extended family circle and Internet access points. Therefore, VimpelCom’s initiative is unlikely to have a negative impact on subscribers.

Another question is that competitors are unlikely to support the initiative of VimpelCom, which a few years ago officially abandoned the pursuit of the volume of its subscriber base. MTS, MegaFon and Tele2 continue to show their shareholders beautiful numbers of connection growth. In the fourth quarter, MTS’s subscriber base grew by 1.3% year-on-year, to 81.1 million subscribers, MegaFon – by 1.9%, to 76.7 million, Tele2 – by 1.3%, up to 48.1 million, including subscribers of the virtual cellular operator (MVNO) Rostelecom.

VimpelCom did not disclose the size of the database at the end of 2024, explaining that it “removed from the reporting and KPI management system all misleading and out-of-touch metrics” that are “easy to manipulate”: just send an advertising SMS to number one or activate a SIM -card in a special device to fulfill the sales plan.

However, taking into account the idea of ​​limiting SIM cards, the beautiful idea of ​​​​refusing to manipulate metrics can well be interpreted as the (also quite elegant) idea of ​​manipulating competitors, for whom the size of the subscriber base is still important. VimpelCom itself has nothing to lose here – according to the latest disclosed indicators, in the third quarter of 2023 the number of its subscribers already decreased by 4% year-on-year, to 44.1 million people.