Mobiuz sets fees UZS 10,000 higher on 20 older plans, with no extra data

Mobiuz has set the monthly fee on 20 of its older tariff plans UZS 10,000 higher from 3 November, while the minutes, data and SMS included stay the same, a comparison of its notice of 19 October with its own archived-plan pages shows.

The rises run from 6.1 per cent on the most expensive of the plans to 50 per cent on the cheapest, by Corridor Signal's calculation. The notice says the subscription fee for 21 plans "will change" from 3 November and lists the new fee and allowances for each. It does not state the current fees or give a reason. The notice also says the new fee is charged from the next monthly debit, but not earlier than 3 November.

Corridor Signal compared the notice with the fees shown on the operator's archived-plan pages on 24 October. Twenty of the 21 plans have a page there. On every one, the new fee is exactly UZS 10,000 above the fee shown, and the minutes, data and SMS in the notice match those on the page. No archived page was found for the 21st plan, Mazza 60+, which the notice prices at UZS 80,000 a month.

Six of the 20 plans rise by 20 per cent or more, and 11 by 14.3 per cent or more. The largest rise in percentage terms is on Barchaga, a UZS 20,000 plan with 500 minutes, 500 SMS and 10 GB for TAS-IX resources. Mobiuz stopped activations of and switches to Barchaga from 7 October, a notice of 24 September shows. The same notice said activations of M, Mazza 70 and Xotirjam 80 would be temporarily unavailable for technical reasons.

Older plans against the current range

From 3 November some older plans cost as much as, or more than, plans Mobiuz now sells with the same or larger data allowances. Mazza 70 costs UZS 80,000 for 150 GB, unlimited calls in Uzbekistan and 5,000 SMS, the same price, data, calls and SMS as the current ORZU plan on the operator's ORZU tariff page. Mobi 150 costs UZS 175,000 for 115,000 MB, against UZS 150,000 for 400 GB on ORZU 150, and Mobi 110 costs UZS 135,000 for 95,000 MB, against UZS 110,000 for 250 GB on ORZU 110. The plans differ in SMS allowances and bundled services, so these comparisons cover only the fee and the data allowance.

The review behind the numbers

The notice came ten days after Uzbekistan's Competition Committee said it had begun examining whether price increases by mobile operators were justified. In its statement of 9 October the committee said consumers objected that tariff rises were out of proportion to the extra internet traffic added to plans, that the traffic could not always be used in full because quality was not guaranteed, and that unused traffic did not carry over to the next month. On the 20 plans compared here, the fee rises while the allowances stay as they were. The committee gave no timetable for its review. Corridor Signal's report on the review examined earlier Mobiuz changes this year, which added data as fees rose, and statistics committee data show communication and information services output rising this year.

Method and gaps

The fees before the change are those in the summary boxes of Mobiuz's archived-plan pages on 24 October; the notice gives no earlier fees. The pages are not fully consistent. The conditions text on the GAP yo'q Pro and GAP yo'q Ultra pages cites monthly fees of UZS 75,000 and UZS 100,000, below the UZS 90,000 and UZS 110,000 in their summary boxes, which would make those two rises larger. The identical UZS 10,000 step across all 20 plans suggests the summary figures are the fees in force, but Mobiuz has not published them alongside the notice. The notice also lists annual-payment prices for 15 plans: for six the annual price is ten times the new monthly fee, while the figures for the other nine, from UZS 60,000 to UZS 8 million, do not follow that pattern.