The situation with the annual and almost simultaneous price increases by mobile operators is extremely worrying. This was commented on by the Chairperson of the Consumer Protection Commission (CPC) Maria Filipova. According to her, price increases are unacceptable at this difficult time for people. Filipova's opinion was disseminated by the CPC press center.
We recall that on Saturday the commission spoke out against the unilateral decision of the mobile operator Yettel to provide its customers with more minutes for national calls, more MB internet traffic and higher speed for a fee. Today, a non-governmental organization informed about a similar service from Vivacom. At the same time, the three mobile operators in the country changed the conditions for indexing their prices from January 1, 2025.
"With the sole aim of greater profit, raising prices puts people in a dead end and completely unable to access the services provided by mobile operators. Against the backdrop of the difficult economic situation, I consider this behavior to be an absolute lack of interest in the financial and physical survival of people, says Maria Filipova. She points out that the problem is large and affects the entire society.
"The state's tool for dealing with this crisis, because this situation is truly a crisis, is in the hands of the Communications Regulatory Commission (CRC)," she notes. Filipova explains that if the CRC, together with the CPC, assesses that operators have a significant impact on retail prices in the electronic communications services market, the Communications Regulatory Commission can exercise control over retail prices for as long as necessary. She also stated that the CPC will cooperate with the CRC and the CPC within its legal powers.
"I would very much like to draw the attention of the people who create and change the laws in Bulgaria to this problem and I hope for their urgent understanding. It is possible to provide for the term of the contract that the price should not be changed unilaterally by the operator, except in the presence of serious economic reasons", Filipova pointed out and assured that while she is the chairwoman of the CPC, she will defend the interests of the people to the end and will publicize everything that she believes harms them.