Play Mobile, which provides SMS notification services, announced an increase in tariffs for incoming messages in the national payment system Uzcard. This was reported by the company's press service on February 5.
Starting from March 1, the cost of each SMS sent from the number 5800 for customers of the operators Beeline, Humans, Perfectum, Ucell, Mobiuz, and UzMobile will double—from 84.2 to 168.4 sums.
The company noted that the tariffs for SMS notification services had not changed since July 2019, while the volume of SMS traffic had increased by 75%, which "significantly raised the expenses for maintaining the hardware and software complex."
Additionally, there have been increased costs associated with hiring developers, upgrading production infrastructure, refining and providing technical support for software, as well as integrating it with the systems of partners and telecommunications operators.
Play Mobile emphasized the "significant increase in external economic factors affecting the cost of services."
"In recent years, the cost of electricity has risen by 100%, the basic calculation value has increased by 68%, and the average cost of one SMS charged by telecommunications operators has surged by 300%," the IT company stated.
The payment organization Plum Technologies, affiliated with Uzcard, also announced an increase in the cost of services for the Telegram bot CardXabar. Previously, a monthly fee of 1000 sums was charged, but from March 1, packages will be introduced with prices depending on the message limit: the cheapest Start package (up to 250 SMS messages) will cost 5000 sums, while the most expensive Infinite package (from 20,000 SMS messages) will be 500,000 sums.
Earlier, Spot reported that the "white" import of mobile phones had grown by nearly a quarter over the year.