Lower mobile phone prices from June 1

The Communications Regulatory Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina informs the public that on June 1, 2016, the first set of measures aimed at reducing mobile phone prices, encouraging competition, and protecting the rights of end users comes into effect, as reported by the Bosnian news agency Patria.

As a reminder, the Agency adopted the Decision on harmonizing mobile phone service prices and conditions for providing telecommunications services, which ordered operators BH Telecom d.d. Sarajevo, Mtel a.d. Banja Luka, and HT d.d. Mostar to apply the following measures from the said Decision no later than June 1, 2016:

The measure from point II a) of the Decision mandates equalizing the prices of calls from a mobile network to other fixed networks with the price of calls from a mobile network to its own fixed network, and applies to all postpaid and prepaid packages. The measure aims to encourage competition and prevent the transfer of market power from the fixed telephony market to the mobile telephony market.

The measure from point II d) of the Decision mandates that the validity period of a prepaid user's account after a top-up of 10.00 KM or more must last at least 90 days (during the 90-day period, the user must be allowed incoming and outgoing calls) and was imposed to protect the rights of end users.

The measure from point II b) of the Decision requires an amendment to Article 13 of Rule 67/2012 on the model for rebalancing prices of voice telephony services in Bosnia and Herzegovina for postpaid and prepaid tariff packages. The goal of applying this measure is non-discrimination of mobile phone users compared to fixed phone users. The draft of Rule 67/2012 has been sent for public consultation until June 7, 2016.

Given that the reduced mobile phone prices are included in newly formed packages that are on offer, the Agency calls on end users to inform themselves about the availability of available packages and tariff models in order to have access to mobile phone services at reduced prices.

The second set of measures comes into effect on July 1, 2016.