Starting December 15, the telecommunications carrier MegaFon is to switch to the new basic rates for international roaming services in Europe, including the European part of the CIS and Turkey. The carrier launches a single Eurorate for all the Russian subscribers and charges them 6 RUR or 16 RUR per minute, depending on the destination of the call. The rates for roaming data transfer and text messages have also been reduced dramatically, the company’s press service reports.

These changes in the roaming rates proved the most considerable in the last few years: the price of an incoming call has gone down from 56 RUR per minute to only 6 RUR (this means it was reduced by nine times); the price of an outgoing call to Russia and around the country one is staying in has gone down from 86 RUR per minute to only 16 RUR (this means it was reduced by over five times); the price of Internet access dropped from 110-440 RUR per megabyte to only 50 RUR; finally, the price of an outgoing text message decreased from 19 RUR to 6 RUR.

This Eurorate is valid in Europe and the European part of the CIS, including Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Byelorussia, Croatia, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Greece, Greenland, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lichtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Macedonia, Malta, Moldova, Monaco, Montenegro, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Rumania, San Marino, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and the Vatican – forty-four countries altogether.