The great secret of roaming in Russia. Now you have to pay for incoming calls

The great secret of roaming in Russia. Now you have to pay for incoming calls.

The great secret of roaming in Russia. Now you have to pay for incoming calls

Just a reminder, the FAS is shaking things up mobile carriers. All in the name of suppressing intra-network roaming.

Does anyone here think the big three will just shut it down? Gonna . rose-colored glasses. The last frontier fell the other day.

Megafon recently sent me an SMS to notify me of a change in the tariff conditions. Thanks guys, I wish it was always like this. They assured me that “it will be more comfortable and easier to communicate and use fast Internet when traveling to Russia.”

Anyway, it has not been easier.

This is how the new roaming works

The operators have “obediently” complied with the FAS requirements and have amicably suppressed roaming. But at the same time they came up with a new plan to make money from long distance calls. AND the samewith a slight price difference. This is the gist:

1. Suppose you leave your home region and come to Moscow.

2. All in-network calls to Moscow numbers become free within your rate packages.

3. All calls on the network from numbers in other regions (including your home number). billable. Right to the minute, passing the bag.

It deals with both incoming and outgoing calls. So if a person has moved to another region and he keeps getting calls from his home region, he has to pay good money.

At the same time, the Internet will work throughout Russia as it does at home. As always, there are conditions for Sevastopol and Crimea. There are also a couple of nuances in SMS. We have already compared the rates of the main operators in this article.

What’s the catch?

It is even possible to get a less phone turned off.

That is the first thing that came to my mind after reading the conditions. It is a useless service: the voice mail with answering machine. The point is that the connection between the subscribers is established as soon as the answering machine is turned on. And now you have to pay for these calls pay.

Have you thought about walking away from business, turning off your phone, and tossing it on a faraway shelf? This is how you can get your money’s worth.

Yes, in the age of messengers, hardly anyone leaves voicemails on voicemail. But there are all kinds of amazing offers from banks, insurance companies or “investment” firms that keep coming in. And then there’s the occasional recording of calls from colleagues and family.

Where’s the proufe, Billy?

Of course, I checked immediately.

There were some notifications on the voicemail messages. I compared it with the data from the call and my hunch was confirmed.

These are voicemail notifications. I have assembled it over a few days to complete the picture:

In the detail of the same timestamps we see the following:

So when a message is left for me this way, the operator records my SIM card’s outgoing call (!) and then an incoming notification message. Call a paging “server” located in my home region. Consequently, all of this is now free. But in roaming these notifications will cost me 5-10p. depending on the length of the message.

Again, this is not exclusive to Megafon, other operators have more or less the same picture.

What to do now?

Option 1: Leave the SIM card at home and use the local ones.

Not just move them locally, but specifically leave them at home. Right when you arrive in the new region, the SIM card will be registered through the local service stations. In this way, the operator will realize that you are not in the region of origin and will enable “comfortable and easy” roaming conditions. If you leave the card at home, none of this will happen.

Option 2: Turn off voicemail and hope for the best.

An answering machine of this type is one more service of the operators. On Megafon it is Caller+» and on Beeline it is «Answering machine» and MTS called the service «Voicemail«. All this can be disabled and you can stop thinking about incoming calls. However, many people continue to receive voice messages even after disconnection. It may take time to turn off, but everything turned off at once for me.

Here is a list of commands to disable voicemail:

for the megaphone: *581*3#
for MTS: SMS with the text 902 to the number 111
for Beeline: *110*010#

Option 3: give up and buy a roaming package.

The logic is simple: if you travel a lot, get the right fare. If you don’t travel much, each operator has a package of roaming minutes.

Do you remember how it was before? For example, as soon as you leave the country, immediately activate the “Through Russia” option. This model completely suits the operators, which is what they are trying to come back to.

Here’s what the Big Three offer:

Megaphone: Option to be at home«
MTS: Russia Option Home Package«
Beeline: All my 3«

What’s next?

It is clear that the operators have had a bad year. The abolition of roaming, the Yarovaya Package: the costs have skyrocketed. The only thing is that all these innovations will have to be paid for out of pocket. After all, any telecommunications operator is a commercial entity that wants to to earn money. About you and about me.

Nobody is going to remove the data storage obligations of the operators. Roaming is also a unique thing. So we are waiting for new and interesting ways to charge more cache. Maybe they should charge for incoming SMS? 🙂

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