North Caucasus tops mobile service anti-rating

The North Caucasus regions are anti-leaders in the mobile service anti-rating compiled by the Content Review information review agency, based on the results of a study of eight operators' tariffs in all constituent entities of the Russian Federation.

In all the entities, MTS, MegaFon, Beeline and Tele2 tariffs were considered, and in Crimea - Win Mobile, KrymTelecom, SevMobile and Volna Mobile operators. Based on these data, the average tariff cost for each region was established. The ratio of the average tariff to the average income of the population produced an accessibility index: the lower it is, the more accessible mobile service the region has.

Dagestan has the highest accessibility index - 12.2 (84th place). It is followed by Kabardino-Balkaria with an index of 12 (83rd place), Karachay-Cherkessia and Chechnya with 11.8 and Ingushetia with 11.7 (80th place).

The Stavropol Territory is the 76th with an index of 10.4, followed by North Ossetia - 10.3.

The Yamalo-Nenets Autonomous Okrug has the most affordable cell-phone plan (2.3). It is followed by Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Okrug (3.2), the Sakhalin Region (3.6), Moscow (3.9) and the Magadan Region (4.1).

The average index accessibility across Russia - 6.4. Compared with December of last year, it increased by 0.5.

The political scientist, director of the expert council of the 'South' think tank Sergey Starovoitov, speaking with the correspondent of Vestnik Kavkaza, noted that such ratings  could be inaccurate due to unofficial incomes of the population. "When assessing the income of residents of the North Caucasus, only official data are taken into account. But if in the northern oil producing regions, where mainly state employees or employees of large oil corporations work, there is practically no unofficial component in wages, then the situation in the North Caucasus is different, because a large part of the economy is grey," he said.

"It would be better to estimate the amount of hours spent on calls. Then, if it turns out that a Muscovite, for example, talks 50 or 500 hours on the phone per month, and a resident of Dagestan - 30 hours, it can be stated that the difference in the availability of mobile service," Sergey Starovoitov added.