Operator charged money for roaming, though the subscriber was in Belarus. How is this possible?

A Belarusian reported on Threads that near the Lithuanian border, while on the territory of Belarus, his wife's phone connected to roaming, which led to money being deducted from her account.

The man was outraged by the situation, and the support service's response did not satisfy him. According to him, the operator did not return the lost funds. Onliner.by investigated the details and received a comment from the operator.

As Dmitry, the author of the post, told, he, his wife, and brother were returning home to Gomel by car after the Viva Braslav festival. Their route passed through the agro-town of Kozyany, which is located near the border with Lithuania.

"My wife's and brother's phones received SMS messages stating that roaming was activated and funds would be debited according to the tariff. As a result, A1 debited 12 rubles from my wife's account. My brother also received a warning about activated roaming, but his mobile internet was disabled, so nothing was debited.

I understand that the responsibility for activated roaming lies entirely with us, but the operator did not warn us that we were in a border zone and charges were possible," the man told an Onliner journalist.

Павялічыць

According to Dmitry, the support service explained to him that Lithuanian base stations "work stronger than Belarusian ones, which is why your devices connected to their network, and you were charged for roaming."

"I'll add from myself: I consider this situation unfair only because there was no warning from A1 — money was debited immediately. It's also upsetting that we did not leave Belarus, but paid for using another country's network, although we didn't need it. The operator returned nothing," the Belarusian complained.

In May, A1 company introduced a new mobile internet billing system abroad called "AntiRoaming". Among other things, it promised "only transparent conditions" and "no unexpected expenses".

What the operator replied

A1 representatives commented on the situation and explained how to avoid similar cases:

"In the border zone, subscribers' mobile devices may receive a signal from foreign operators' base stations. The choice of whether to connect to them or not depends on the internal logic of the smartphone, which constantly scans networks in real-time and can connect to different base stations depending on their proximity, signal strength and type, network load, and other technical factors.

Telecommunication operators cannot influence this principle of mobile devices' operation. For the same reason, operators cannot determine which side of the border a subscriber is on, and have no ability to influence their registration in one network or another.

To avoid similar cases, we recommend activating roaming services only when traveling abroad or setting manual network selection and registering in the A1 Belarus network, so that the device does not try to connect to a foreign operator's network."

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