The Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (AMCU) has decided to impose a fine in the amount of 19 million 466,84 thousand UAH for the mobile operator lifecell the case in regards to communication conditions of the calls, said the head of AMKU Yury Terentyev.
“The defendant in the communication with consumers indicated that billing is “per second”. At the same time, the actual charging takes place in a full amount of minutes for each first second of each minute started”, he explained and clarified that we are talking about the violation of article 15-1 of the law “On protection from unfair competition” (information dissemination, misleading).
In response to the publication in Facebook the head of the ACU has received many comments that “everybody does it”. On another similar post “And MTS and “Kyivstar” is not the same? Also why are they not fined? Or they brought “who should the? Terentyev said: “the work”.
The operator lifecell stated that he did not agree with the decision of the AMC to recover from him the penalty. “The fine imposed on the smallest of the three players in the market, while the company “VF Ukraine” (the brand “Vodafone Ukraine”, formerly “MTS Ukraine”) with almost twice abonati applying the same method of billing, the Committee in December 2016 provided only recommendations, and in February 2017 closed the proceedings without penalty,” – said in lifecell/
In a press-service of the operator said that the Ukrainian telecommunications market is still monopolized, the two dominant operator continue to abuse their position, limiting the free choice of the subscriber and the competitiveness of other players, and the use of unfair sanctions lifecell minimizes opportunities for investment in technology development of the next generations.
“I also want to note that through the many available channels of communication, the operator had received a very minor number of complaints from subscribers on the incomprehensibility of billing subscribers. The company lifecell believes that our wording on the pricing is aimed to be an exhaustive report to the subscriber information how you will be charged for the call. According to the survey of consumers ‘ opinions, the wording lifecell by charging correctly understand more than 70% of subscribers. This percentage understanding the results of the study was higher than the percentage of understanding language to the second operator in response to the recommendations of the AMC,” summed up in lifecell.
Mobile operator lifecell – third in the number of subscribers of the operator in Ukraine. By the end of 2016, the company received 928,3 million UAH of net profit, compared with 4,439 billion net loss in 2015. Its revenue for 2016 rose 8.1% to 4,838 billion, and EBITDA declined by 8.7% to 1,356 billion. Active subscriber base last year decreased by 13.2% to 9.2 million, ARPU (revenue per subscriber) increased by 14.4% to UAH 40.6 per.
