Almost half of Russians faced "mobile slavery"

The "mobile slavery" associated with the difficulties of switching from one mobile operator to another still exists: 40% of Russians face significant difficulties when trying to transfer their phone number to another operator. These conclusions were reached by VTsIOM experts who conducted a survey on the change of mobile operator in cooperation with the consumer protection organization Public Consumer Initiative.

According to the study, switching to another mobile operator while retaining the number is a service in demand among Russians, but its implementation in practice is often inaccessible to mobile users. So, almost half of the subscribers who wanted to save the number when changing the mobile operator were unable to do so. Only in 60% of cases, attempts to change the operator are successful, and another 40% of consumers who wanted to change the operator were unable to do so, including due to obstacles from the previous operator.

When trying to change the operator, Russians face a number of barriers. In addition to the length of the transition, 11% of those who successfully transferred their number and 9% of those who did not mention it as the main difficulty, the operator's unwillingness to release the subscriber, the intrusiveness in offering services (9% and 7%, respectively), the need to come to the operator's office (6% each) and errors in personal data (5% and 4%). For those who did not change the operator with their number, unclear transition conditions (4%) and the inability to get the expected favorable tariff (4%) became a significant barrier. Other obstacles included bureaucratic hurdles, filling out an excessive number of documents, collecting additional fees, the operator's refusal of the service, lack of compensation for an unused tariff, and repeated filing of an application.