Vacation in Russia | Telecom Consumer Discussion Forums

Sure, Costin, I will add the rates as a part of this thread. I am just trying to make sure I have all the bases covered before going into the rates

I think it is about time to give you more specifics on each company’s pricing and offers. We will start with probably the oldest one and in my opinion the most controversial of the three: MTS. The story with them is in the beggining they were considered to be the most government affiliated, some say that such affiliation allows them to provide the better coverage, others that it allows them to charge more.

Whether that is true or not, we will not know, but what many have noticed after using the service for some time that it is not uncommon to see the money being taken off your balance without you using them at the moment. Most of such “slip offs” can be explained by the way the company charges you: their daily charge is not regular although should stay within the limits of your monthly plan payment, and it can take up to several days between the actual call and the moment they will take money of your account for it.

Another nonappealing trade consists of giving you the services beyond the requested ones and charging you for them without really telling you about it. Sometimes it leads to quite a debt on your end for using something silly like “melody instead of the beep” for 0.99$ a day that you have no clue about as nobody really cares to tell you.

At the end this tends to make people much more cautious about their balance, which you can check by dialing #100# for English. To check how many MMS, SMS or how many minutes or GPRS traffic left on your mobile plan dial #100*1#

So why use them at all? Well, they do provide fairly decent coverage all over the biggest cities, say Moscow or St. Petersburg, and they have international plans that allow you to call outside Russia for as low as 4.9 RUB a minute (0.143 USD/minute) All you have to do is connect the service called Favorite Country. The World, for 70 RUB (2USD) and select the country you will be calling the most as your favourite one. All the incoming calls and messages will be free of course.

For the calls inside the country the pricing will depend on which operator you will be calling to. For example the mobile plan Smart allows you to call for free for the first 400 minutes of talk. After 400 minutes calling other MTS numbers will remain free and they will charge you 2RUB (0.06USD) to call the numbers form other providers. To access such mobile plan you will have to pay 24.75 USD every month.

Such plan will provide 1GB of mobile internet of up to 4G quality, that once being used up will drop the speed to 256kbps. to bring the speed back up you will have to buy additional 500MB or 2GB of mobile internet by paying 75RUB or 200RUB (2.2 or 5.8 USD) accordingly. If you want to start with 3GB Initially you can select Smart+ option that will cost you 30USD against 24.75 for just Smart.

For more information on available mobile plans please visit http://en.mts.ru/tariffs/

The next company to look at will be Beeline. Very well known across Russia for its commercials, it is yet not very memorable. It provides the service and takes your money at a very stale rate and the only really annoying thing about it is that this provider tends to send you advert messages on your phone without any signal or notice. So every once in a while you take a look at your mobile phone and see that you have received another offer to connect to some service or download a ringtone. It is hramless and as far as I aware costs you no money, so it is all that it is – annoying. Unless you click on confirmation button instead of just deleting the service, in that case cancell the purchase (which will be made instantly) is going to be a hassle.

Beeline pushes for monthly payments and that is what their mobile plans are about. The most common plan called Vsjo (Everything) has options for 100, 300, 500 and 1000 RUB a month and differs by number SMSes, calls and Internet traffic you can have. Vsjo 300 is the most popular one and it provides:

The last but not the least company in the top three of the mobile providers is Megafon. I have to warn you that I will be fairly bias about it as this is currently the provider I am with. But then again, deciding to go with certain mobile network already proves it quality, so maybe bias is not the word. As with the other two operators, I will provide the link for their webpage at the end, so you will have a chance to check it out yourself.

Megafon is the second biggest mobile services provider (after MTS) and is just as politically engaged as the leader. It originated from St. Petersburg and till today has the best coverage in that cuty, including the subway system (sic!). They tend to be the first ones to try new stuff, Megafon was the first one to install GSM 1800 towers instead of GSM 900, like every other company out there and they pioneered LTE networks (4G).

Their webpage offers three main plans – to chat with users of the same network (Move to 0), to chat with users of other providers (All is simple) and the monthly payment plan (All inclusive). For international users there is the plan called Warm Welcome. A bit more on that later. 

I am currently using the All Inclusive plan. There are 3 options – S, M and L. I have chosen S which costs me 8 RUB (0.23USD) a day that gives me:

• 300 min of talk time;
• 1 GB Internet 3G, 4G+;
• 100 SMS/ММS

A month. If I exceed the limits I have to pay 0.8RUB (0.02USD) a minute to call other networks. To call the other guys on my network is free.

As with the other operators exceeding the internet limit will drop the Internet speed down to practically 0. And to call abroad (as in Europe) it really does not matter which plan you chose, it will always be the same – calls to Europe for 29.95 RUB (0.88USD) and to every other country for 68.80 RUB (2.02USD) a minute.

And now for the Warm Welcome plan. It is about the only one available if you access the English webpage of the Megafon: http://english.moscow.megafon……u/tariffs/ and it will provide you calls for 3.5/5 RUB a minute to Europe BUT if it is your first call to Europe they will charge you 100 RUB and provide you 60 minutes of such calls. When you talked through the 60 minutes they will get back to the original rates 29.95 for Europe and 68.80 for Americas untill you buy another 60 minutes for 100 RUB. So it is highly advised to monitor the amount of minutes left. You can do it by dialing *558#

So to make your life easier, go for All Included instead and connect the International Hour, which will provide you with cheaper local calls as per selected plan, and save you on international calls as per Warm Welcome deal.