Antitrust agency again targeting the ‘Big Troika’ in price-policy collusion

The Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) believes that the so-called telecom ‘Big Three’ is involved in collusion to maintain exclusively high prices for mobile services, which can lead to antitrust prosecution against the trio from the industry oversight agencies.

The term, ‘Big Troika,’ is used to refer to MTS, VimpelCom and Megafon, as their aggregated market share, currently standing at 85%, far exceeds the threshold required for monopolistic domination of an industry. “Their level of roaming service tariffs superseded the benchmark set by the Eurocommission by 3-6 times. As these increments are not legally justified, they can make the operators liable for turnover penalties,” FAS said.