Telenor: fee and service change due to the introduction of the telephone tax
As early as May, Telenor Hungary indicated that it would be forced to enforce the additional burden arising from the new telephone tax in its tariffs.
The company stresses that with the introduction of the new tax, more than half of the total cost of a one-minute conversation will already be fees, taxes and contributions payable to the state. According to Telenor, the new tax imposes a disproportionate burden on telecommunications services, forcing the company to change its tariff packages. The mobile operator is convinced that this adjustment will cause less damage overall than if the company were to freeze its long-term development projects or take drastic cost-cutting measures.
The price change will take effect on July 16, and overall, only a portion of the additional costs from the telephone tax will be felt by Telenor customers. The company adjusts its tariff packages and services to take into account the telephone usage habits of different consumer groups: the monthly charges for residential customers do not change, while the call costs for small and medium-sized business customers who make many calls do not change based on usage. The changes will affect SMS in all tariff packages, while the mobile Internet tariff will not change in connection with the introduction of the telephone tax.
Retail customers: no increase in the monthly fee
The monthly fee for retail customers does not change (except for the small number of subscribers using the Call tariff package). At the same time, postpaid subscribers can expect a slight increase in the total amount of the telephone bill, as from July 16 they will pay a net connection fee of HUF 1,96 for each successful call. The fee is independent of the duration of the call and does not apply to numbers that can be called free of charge, calls to donation lines or roaming calls made from foreign partner networks. The price of SMS increases by HUF 1,96 net in the case of retail customers in accordance with the tax rate.
Another change is that the Family Package, with which family members can make unlimited calls to each other domestically for a fixed fee, will in future be limited to 1000 minutes (i.e. 16,6 hours) of talk per month per subscription. Subscribers to monthly tariff packages that include call minutes (excluding Okostarifa users) will only be able to use 60% of call minutes for calls within the network and 40% for calls to other domestic networks. After the use of the callable minutes included in the Okostarif, the per-minute charges for additional calls will increase by HUF 1,57 net.
In the case of prepaid tariff packages, the introduction of a telephone tax requires a net increase of HUF 1,4 per minute, and a connection fee must be paid for each taxable call - this step is in fact an extension of the already proven and accepted practice in the case of the Telenor Praktikum Ace tariff package.
Business Tariffs: Call costs do not vary based on the number of calls
Given that a significant proportion of subscribers to public SME tariff packages make many calls, the cost increase will be a fixed amount and not based on the number or length of calls. Telenor will increase the monthly basic fee for public business tariff packages by an average net HUF 265, and the first minute will be billed on a per minute basis instead of per second. The terms and conditions of the minutes included in the monthly fee are modified so that 50 percent of them can be terminated within the Telenor network, and the remaining part can be canceled during calls to other domestic networks. Similar to the changes for retail customers, the price of SMS also changes by HUF 2 net in the case of business tariff packages. In the case of packages with unlimited domestic calls within the company, the number of minutes included in the package is limited to 1000 per month (ie 16,6 hours of free calls).
Source: Press release
