English

Mobile phone, Internet access charges rise by 20 percent

Mobile phone and Internet access charges were increased by 20 percent in Belarus on January 1, 2013 as the providers were no longer be exempted from paying 20-percent value-added tax.

According to the Ministry of Finance, the abolition of the exemption, provided for by the amended Tax Code of Belarus, “will ensure additional VAT revenues and the increase in the population’s expenses will be insignificant.”

Belarus has three GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) operators: Mobile TeleSystems (MTS), which has the largest number of subscribers; Mobile Digital Communications, the country's oldest GSM provider also known as Velcom; and Turkish-owned Belarusian Telecommunication Network (BeST), which uses the brand name life:).

Belarus also has a CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) network operator called BelCel.

Belarus had 10.7 million mobile phone subscribers as of January 1, 2012, according to the communications ministry.

The number of Internet users in Belarus is estimated to have increased by some 13 percent last year to about 4.5 million. //BelaPAN