Russia Moves To Calling Party Pays

[Effendi]

Russian president signs caller pays principle bill into law

MOSCOW, Mar 6 (Prime-Tass) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a bill seeking to introduce the Calling Party Pays (CPP) principle effective July 1, the government's press service said on Saturday.

Among other things, the bill forbids telecommunication operators from charging receiving parties for incoming calls.

The bill provides for three exceptions to the CPP principle.

The bill stipulates that receiving parties must pay for direct-dialed collect calls, collect calls made via telephone operators, and for roaming calls, which are made from a region other than the home region for their phone numbers.

According to the bill, telecommunications operators whose tariffs are subject to government regulation must also give their subscribers an option to repay access fees at least six months after installation with an advance payment of no more than 30%. In Russia most traditional fixed-line operators are subject to government regulation.

Currently, Russian mobile operators charge for most incoming fixed-to-mobile phone calls. They do offer, however, free fixed-to-mobile incoming calls on some contracts with a minimum monthly fee.

[AndreA]

Originally Posted by Effendi

Russian president signs caller pays principle bill into law

MOSCOW, Mar 6 (Prime-Tass) -- Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed into law a bill seeking to introduce the Calling Party Pays (CPP) principle effective July 1, the government's press service said on Saturday.

interesting... Asick do you have more details for us?

[Asick]

Originally Posted by AndreA

interesting... Asick do you have more details for us?

Not really. I mean, the things told above are clear enough to understand that Russia is really going to accept the CPP rule. There were some discussions on that topic in the Duma (Russian parliament), so, now the law has finally been signed by the President after it was built and confirmed by the Duma, so this is actually going to turn Russian cellular billings up to the European principles. I was always supporting the CPP rule, so I'm glad. The months before the law starts working are intended for establishing some direct money communications between operators etc. Generally, it will just lower down to 0 price for any incoming calls on Russian cellulars, but will create a price for calls from landlines to local cellulars (now they are free).

[Przemolog]

" (...) receiving parties must pay for (...) roaming calls, which are made from a region other than the home region for their phone numbers."

As I understood the above, different regions still will be considered as "separate countries" (by charging rules, not by rates) ?

Originally Posted by Asick

Not really. I mean, the things told above are clear enough to understand that Russia is really going to accept the CPP rule. There were some discussions on that topic in the Duma (Russian parliament), so, now the law has

Was anybody in the Duma against CPP???

Originally Posted by Asick

finally been signed by the President after it was built and confirmed by the Duma, so this is actually going to turn Russian cellular billings up to the European principles. I was always supporting the CPP rule, so I'm glad.
The months before the law starts working are intended for establishing some direct money communications between operators etc. Generally, it will just lower down to 0 price for any incoming calls on Russian cellulars, but will create a price for calls from landlines to local cellulars (now they are free).

Do Russian mobile phones share their numbering ranges with landlines (like in the USA/Canada) and that's why calls to them may be considered "local" where applicable? If so, how will they be distinguished from "real" local landline numbers by an average user?

[Asick]

About different regions, I'm sure that this will be working the way it works now, I mean the CPP rule will only be applied while a subscriber is located within his or her home region, otherwise it would be treated as 'innernetwork' roaming, which does include approximately $0.20-$0.30/min per any incoming call on it's tariff list. I don't think it'll be changed in the nearest future, I have not heard any plans about canceling this feature. The only thing we can expect here is merging some regions from the cellular point of view (i.e. local tariffs for the whole North-West or Central, or another big area). Anyway, this is reasonable, just imagine how much a call from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok might cost and so on. Making this flat all around the country would inevitable result into global raising of the current tariffs.

I'm not sure if there were some opponents to the CPP rule in the Duma, I don't know the details, but I guess there were not really much, because it's quite difficult to imagine even a few arguments against CPP. AFAIK they discussed mostly about some details (dates, billing, mutual charges etc.).

Most of the Russian cellular numbers are placed within their own cellular codes (usually +79...) like in Europe, but some numbers do really have local numbers, as if they were fixed. However, most of them have aliases placed in +79..., so a local number is just a sort of additional bonus from the technical point of view. Users cannot actually distinguish a local fixed number from a cellular local number, even though sometimes it's possible (for example, +78129... is usually a cellular placed in St.Petersburg regional code, but some other cellulars have +7812716... etc., and Moscow has no such the rule, there's real mess). So, they are going to declare a local cellular number to be an additional option which is a sort of permanent redirection from a local fixed virtual number to a cellular, so they might set a price for incoming calls to that number because this would be the redirection price, which would not be covered by the CPP rule. And, calls to the cellular number of the same SIM (i.e. +79... number) would still be free for the SIM's owner. And, surely, nobody here is going to specially bill calls to fixed number ranges, because this would be really crazy, this would kill the billing systems all around Russia.

[Przemolog]

Originally Posted by Asick

About different regions, I'm sure that this will be working the way it works now, I mean the CPP rule will only be applied while a subscriber is located within his or her home region, otherwise it would be treated as 'innernetwork' roaming, which does include approximately $0.20-$0.30/min per any incoming call on it's tariff list. I don't think it'll be changed in the nearest future, I have not heard any plans about canceling this feature. The only thing we can expect here is merging some regions from the cellular point of view (i.e. local tariffs for the whole North-West or Central, or another big area).

But Moscow and St. Petersburg will remain separate? I suppose that very many (most?) Russian mobile users live in those two cities and the distance between them (about 650 km AFAIR) isn't anything unusual in many other European countries. If they remain separate, that will make good conditions for ripping off .

Originally Posted by Asick

Anyway, this is reasonable, just imagine how much a call from Kaliningrad to Vladivostok might cost and so on. Making this flat all around the country would inevitable result into global raising of the current tariffs.

Oh yes, I realise that large countries suffer from size-specific problems .
But I don't want to imagine anything - how much does a call from Kaliningrad or Sochi to the Pacific coast really cost? Tariffs from abroad to Russia don't necessarily distinguish regions. Are they created on the assumption that most calls won't go east of Moscow .
BTW, 0044 from UK to Russia looks quite interesting:
Mobile $0.26 per minute
Russia Landline $0.26 per minute
Russia - Moscow Landline $0.17 per minute
Russia - Sakhalin Landline $0.25 per minute
Russia - St. Petersburg Landline $0.16 per minute
Why Sakhalin is 1 cent cheaper? A direct link from Japan?

Originally Posted by Asick

I'm not sure if there were some opponents to the CPP rule in the Duma, I don't know the details, but I guess there were not really much, because it's quite difficult to imagine even a few arguments against CPP. AFAIK they discussed mostly about some details (dates, billing, mutual charges etc.).

It's not so obvious after all. In the USA and Canada they even accept paying for incoming SMSes :whistle:. BTW, somebody from the USA on the forum (possibly DRNewcomb, but not 100% sure now) explained me that for him it's better to use nonCPP billing and I even agreed with his pricing details....Yes, with thousand minutes of airtime for a few dollars a month one could live without CPP . Russian transition to CPP was commented also on the Polish GSM newsgroups and - what a surprise - not all supported CPP! I asked one of them "how much would you accept to pay for a minute of incoming calls if your mobile phone had a landline number?" He answered "$15 (roughly convereted from Polish zlotys) a month for 1500 minutes of airtimes would be OK". I can't see any operator here which could accept 1 cent/min only mobile surcharge

Originally Posted by Asick

Most of the Russian cellular numbers are placed within their own cellular codes (usually +79...) like in Europe, but some numbers do really have local numbers, as if they were fixed. However, most of them have aliases placed in +79..., so a local

Most, but not all??? So does this mean that some mobile phones will have to obtain new +79... numbers because they only landline ones now?

Originally Posted by Asick

And, surely, nobody here is going to specially bill calls to fixed number ranges, because this would be really crazy, this would kill the billing systems all around Russia.

Do you mean local calls (which are AFAIK free everywhere in Russia)?

[Asick]

I guess they don't plan to merge St.Petersburg and Moscow into the same billing region. St.Petersburg is always treated as North-West while Moscow is the Center. Actually, calling Moscow from St.Petersburg and back is quite cheap ($0.02-$0.03/min via calling cards and even free via some PC->Phone services), but I've never seen any real merging in tariffs. There are some specific discounts (such as MegaFon St.Petersburg users may call MegaFon Moscow users as if they were calling a local MegaFon number), but it's not the global rule. Anyway, this may change. As you can see, Moscow<->St.Petersburg calls are technically cheap, so why not? And, yes, the distance is about 650 or 700 km depending on how you count (from city border to city border or from city center to city center). Also, you are not right, there are lots of mobile users living outside of St.Petersburg and Moscow. By 2006 there were 124.9 millions of mobile subscribers in Russia. Moscow people had 1.34 number per a person, while it's about 0.85 per an average Russian (data accordingly to J?son & Partners). As you can see, Moscow people just have 2-3 phones (actually numbers) more often, while lots of regional users do have cellulars too.

Well, foreign tariffs for calling Russia is a real weird thing, it's based on many reasons. A foreign operator may use IP-telephony to send the traffic to Russia, thus calls to it's IP-telephony traffic landing points (usually Moscow and St.Petersburg) is usually cheaper. They may use 'official' connections with Rostelekom, and it will change the prices accordingly another rule (more flat, AFAIK). They may just set the prices flat to simplify billing accordingly the average expenses they take on all calls made to Russia. I don't know why Sakhalin is a bit cheaper in your example, may be they have another IP-traffic landing point somewhere on the Pacific cost, so it makes calls a bit cheaper. And, as you can see, calls to Russian cellulars cost the same as calls to Russian landlines, which is quite reasonable before the CPP rule starts to act. However, many foreign operators charge more for calls to Russian cellulars. Why? I have no idea. So, this is really weird, eventually. Looking from here, 2000+ km calls from one Russian place to another may cost from $0.05-$0.08/min (calling cards) to $0.10-$0.20/min (Rostelekom, the biggest fixed long distance provider) up to $0.80/min (on some cellular tariffs). Such the calls are usually much more expensive from cellulars, even though some tariffs are exceptions from this point of view.

Well, I don't understand any reasons to be against CPP. Do you mean some people want to have a local pseudo fixed number which is in fact cellular, and they accept the idea to receive non-free incoming calls? It's not against CPP, it's rather fixed->cellular redirection, as I described you in my previous message. What's else? You know, here are lots of people who are not any rich (pensioners and so on) and who do really suffer when they have to answer non-free calls from persons mistyping the numbers and so on (Caller ID does not always work). Why the hell do they have to pay for that while these inaccurate people pay nothing? This is much more important, IMHO, especially here.

You know, I haven't heard about real cellular numbers that do not have +79... aliases, but I'm not sure here are no any. That's because first Russian cellulars had only local numeration, and +79... range was created later. Many operators added +79... aliases for their old local cellular numbers then, but I was not sure that all did that. I'll try to find this out. By the way, they change Caller IDs in some cases, for example +78129... numbers, as they say, will get their +79... alias numbers as their Caller IDs soon.

Talking about the possible Russian billing collapses I meant calls from one region to another. Just imagine, a user from Sakhalin calls a +7812... number (St.Petersburg city code). The caller's operator in Sakhalin should be able to distinguish St.Petersburg fixed numbers from St.Petersburg cellular numbers placed in +7812... in order to pay the mobile surcharge to the recipient's operator in St.Petersburg, right? It should know that +78127164... is a mobile and that +78127162... is not, and the same about Omsk, Tula, Sochi, Kemerovo, Kaliningrad etc.! This is collapse, that's why I mean they cannot directly apply the CPP rule to that local cellular numbers, so they should set the same rate for the whole city code (as it's set now) and put the extra expenses to owners of those cellular numbers (the virtual redirection stuff). And, local calls from a fixed phone to another fixed phone are not always free in Russia. Accordingly to the new law, a subscriber may pick at least one from three opportunities: free local calls with higher monthly subscription fee, billed local calls with no monthly subscription fee and the combination of them. Before the law, fixed phone networks in many Russian regions (but not in Moscow and not in St.Petersburg) applied non-free local calls tariffs with no other chance to their users...

Oh, what a huge message!

[DRNewcomb]

Originally Posted by Przemolog

BTW, somebody from the USA on the forum (possibly DRNewcomb, but not 100% sure now) explained me that for him it's better to use nonCPP billing and I even agreed with his pricing details....Yes, with thousand minutes of airtime for a few dollars a month one could live without CPP .

I'm not sure I said CSP (Cellular Subscriber Pays) is "better", just different. I think that most Americans would reject the idea of making the people who call them pay 15c-30c per minute as people in other countries do. The falicy is that incoming calls are "free". They aren't free at all. You just shift the cost to someone else, and when that someone is your wife or kids calling from home, it can get pretty spendy.

[Przemolog]

Originally Posted by DRNewcomb

I'm not sure I said CSP (Cellular Subscriber Pays) is "better", just different. I think that most Americans would reject the idea of making the people who call them pay 15c-30c per minute as people in other countries do. The falicy is that incoming calls are "free". They aren't free at all. You just shift the cost to someone else, and when that someone is your wife or kids calling from home, it can get pretty spendy.

Originally Posted by DRNewcomb

I'm not sure I said CSP (Cellular Subscriber Pays) is "better", just different. I think that most Americans would reject the idea of making the people who call them pay 15c-30c per minute as people in other countries do.

OK, so one could say in brief:
the Americans say "We pay for being accesible on the phone outdoors";
the Europeans say "We pay in order to be able to reach other people when they are outdoors".
But what is the real reason of that difference??? One might say that's because Europe is more "socialist" or "leftist" than the USA (the Europeans don't want to pay for themselves :P ). I think it's not about getting used to CSP - since Russia has reached, as Asick said, almost 125 million mobile users and moves to CPP anyway...
:unsure:

Originally Posted by DRNewcomb

The falicy is that incoming calls are "free". They aren't free at all. You just shift the cost to someone else, and when that someone is your wife or kids calling from home, it can get pretty spendy.

Who says that calling is free at all ? But you can say the same about landline calls - somebody must pay - the difference is that those calls are cheaper...
And your argument about "family calls" can be easily extended to any "closed" group of people with the common budget for phone calls like a company or public institution. In such a case your real objective is just to minimize the overall cost, and not to avoid paying for incoming calls, so I agree with you. But what about people who receive many calls initiated from outside the "closed" group?

And one more remark about "who pays for what", more precisely about my CPP case . I and my wife have mobile phones but we have also a landline at home and the most important reason for having it that we don't want people who call us from landlines to pay high fixed-to-mobile costs. But the cost of the landline monthly fee is so high (no included minutes, all non-800 calls are paid) that we could pay 50-70% less if we replaced it with an appriopriate mobile plan (i.e. with discount to landlines). In fact, we can say that incoming calls to our _landline_ are not free because we pay an equivalent of about $11 a month for "nothing" i.e. for keeping the line "alive". If we replaced it with a mobile plan with good landline rates, for the same money we could have up to 100 minutes of landline outgoing calls, and, of course, the opportunity of receiving calls without any extra charge as well. I dare to say that if all landlines in Poland were closed, and the current mobile tariffs remained unchanged, then global payments for the same amount of voice calls would significantly decrease

[Effendi]

Regulator may introduce fixed-to-mobile pay calls before July 1

MOSCOW, Mar 14 (Prime-Tass) -- Russia's Federal Tariff Service may introduce paid fixed-to-mobile calls before July 1, when the law on the Calling Party Pays (CPP) principle takes effect, the service's deputy director Vitaly Yevdokimenko told reporters Tuesday.

Yevdokimenko said that the tariff may be introduced after methods to set tariffs on local connections have been worked out.

The service expects all fixed-line operators included in the list of dominant companies to submit their proposals on tariffs for fixed-to-mobile calls.

Meanwhile, the service may start working on developing three tariff plans for fixed-line operators soon, Yevdokimenko said. The work can only start after the IT and Telecommunications Ministry completes its work on instructions to fixed-line operators on calculating their revenues and losses, which is expected to be completed by the end of March.

Yevdokimenko said in late 2005 that fixed-line operators are expected to offer their subscribers three alternative tariff plans from April 1, 2006. Under the first tariff plan subscribers get an unlimited amount of calls for a certain monthly fee, under the second, subscribers pay per minute and under the third tariff plan, a combination of the first two would exist. The first plan would be the only option available in most Russian regions.

The bill seeking to introduce the CPP principle was signed by the president on March 6 and comes into force on July 1. The law forbids telecommunication operators from charging receiving parties for incoming calls in most cases.

Currently, Russian mobile operators charge for most incoming fixed-to-mobile phone calls. They do offer, however, free fixed-to-mobile incoming calls on some contracts with a minimum monthly fee.

The tariff service regulates the tariffs of fixed-line companies that have a dominant position on a regional fixed-line market, where they have over 25% of the fixed-line number capacity and capacities to route over 25% of fixed-line traffic.