OREANDA-NEWS. October 19, 2012. During the summer period over 6 million customers used MegaFon’s roaming services in the countries of Europe. As a result of a significant decrease in roaming prices implemented by the operator at the end of the last year the voice call activity and mobile Internet consumption of Russians abroad have grown several fold. These are the main results of the summer holiday season 2012.

MegaFon presented information on consumption of voice, mobile Internet and other international roaming services. According to the billing data, in the period from June to August 2012, 10% of 63 million customers of the operator used international roaming services in Europe. The number of roamers in Europe has grown by 36% versus the holiday season 2011. The last August was the record month in the number of roaming customers: 2.3 million roamers.

‘The main advantage of MegaFon’s European roaming is that the affordable basic tariffs are applied to all roamers by default. When being on holiday our customers can relax and communicate with their friends without restraint without spending time on activation of complicated options. This is convenient, which explains the growth in consumption’, pointed out the Deputy CEO for Strategic Development of MegaFon OJSC, Mikhail Dubin.

In the summer period the consumption of voice services in roaming grew three fold versus summer 2011 and the volume of data services increased by a factor of 5.5. The increase in SMS transmission was more modest (by a factor of 1.5 times), which can be explained by the fact that due to the decrease in roaming prices sending photos, e-mails, communication via social networks and voice calls supersede short text messages that had traditionally been considered a cheaper option.

In December 2011 MegaFon reduced radically roaming prices and made them more than nine times as less. One minute of incoming calls or one outgoing SMS costs 6 RUR, one minute of outgoing calls costs 16 RUR, the price for mobile Internet is 5 RUR per 100 KB. Low basic tariffs apply to nearly all MegaFon customers in 45 countries of Europe, including European CIS countries and Turkey.