OREANDA-NEWS Antimonopoly Service (FAS) opened cases against the largest mobile operators. The reason is - prices for banking sms-mailing in Russia. The Federal Antimonopoly Service has initiated proceedings against the 4 big mobile operators.

They have not eliminated previously identified violations of Antimonopoly legislation related to the difference in tariffs for sending SMS to banks. This was reported on the website of the FAS.

In June, it was established that prices for SMS for state banks at "MegaFon", "MTS", "T2 mobile" and "VimpelCom" companies are lower than for private banks. FAS warned operators about this and ordered to eliminate discriminatory conditions within 14 days after receiving the warning.

The violations are not eliminated within the prescribed period.  As a result, FAS opened the cases against the operators of the "big four". The ground is of "creating discrimination conditions " (paragraph 8 part 1 article 10 of the Law on protection competitions).

The Commission of the Department will consider them in September.

In addition to more favorable conditions for state banks, the FAS were interested in the decision of "VimpelCom" operator to cancel the possibility of text transliteration from the Cyrillic to the Latin alphabet.  So, the SMS-mailing could become more expensive.

For VimpelCom company, the case was also initiated on the grounds of violation of paragraphs 3, 8, part 1 of article 10 Of the law on protection competitions.

The mobile operator Tele2 is considering the possibility to appeal the FAS warning on prices for sms-mailing for banks to the court. "MegaFon" also reported that its tariffs for sms-mailing for banks correspond to the market level.

The operators is ready to provide the FAS with additional materials in the course. At the same time, experts sure that sms-mailing is not the only way to inform consumers for banks.