29 April 2015 | 01:35

Mobile phone calls to become cheaper in Kazakhstan

Tengrinews.kz

Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Investments and Development plans to continue lowering the mobile phone tariffs in Kazakhstan, Tengrinews reports.

Vice-Minister of Investments and Development of Kazakhstan Askar Zhumagaliyev spoke about it on April 22 at the plenary session in the Majilis, the lower chamber of Kazakhstan’s Parliament.

“In 2014, according to the World Economic Forum (The Global Information Technology Report 2014), our country was ranked 17th in terms of the average per-minute cost of different types of mobile cellular calls. This shows that our tariffs are low compared to the other 130 countries. We will not stop at this, we will continue working in this direction,” Zhumagaliyev said when answering an MP about the measures undertaken by the Ministry to lower the mobile phone call and Internet costs.

The draft law presented by the Ministry in the Majilis envisages amendments to Kazakhstan's legislation to abolish the so-called “mobile slavery” and allow mobile phone users to switch to the cellular services providers of their choice without having to get a new phone number. “After this law enters into force, we will introduce this initiative (abolishment of mobile slavery) and this will promote competition among cellular service providers. We have good initiatives regarding tariffs as well. Tariffs for cellular service will be lowered,” the Vice Minister said.

"The main essence of the abolition of the ‘mobile slavery' is that if a person has a mobile phone number in Kcell and wants to switch to Beeline, he does not now need to buy a new sim card, instead, he may switch to Beeline with the same number. All the person will have to do is fill in an application to be transferred to the indicated mobile cellular network without changing the phone number. This is what the abolition of the so-called 'mobile slavery' means. The transfer will be done for free,” Issekeshev explained.

The draft bill amends the legislation to enable the transfers of mobile phone numbers, and improve the interaction of the cellular service providers and operators of the centralized database with the state authorities in Kazakhstan.

Reporting by Renat Tashkinbayev, writing by Assel Satubaldina, editing by Tatyana Kuzmina

service cellular Kazakh Kazakhstan Law Majilis Minister mobile news price cell phone