Today on the Beeline page in VKontakte information that the company's subscribers have problems accessing Mail.ru Group services. They began on the 10th and were expressed in a decrease in the speed of access to VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, Yulia, Delivery Club, and so on.
The operator suggested that users change services, and Mail.ru Group advised them to change the operator and stated that there were no problems on their part. At the same time, access problems were only through the LTE mobile network. It was enough to switch to Wi-Fi, so that the failures disappeared.
The cause of the conflict could be a change by Beeline in the tariffs for SMS services for Mail.ru Group services: text messages are used for notification and authorization of users, as well as for advertising mailings.
Mail.ru Group said that prices for SMS-services were raised six times in May. Because of this, the routing conditions were changed. It is also stated that Beeline was warned about this.
“A month and a half ago, Beeline unilaterally decided to increase the cost of SMS services for our users by six times. In the process of negotiations, no compromise was reached, therefore, as part of the cost reduction for interaction with this operator, we were forced to suspend the service of the special direct communication channel allocated by us with Beeline, about which we warned our partners. At the same time, the presence of direct channels between operators is not a necessary condition for the operation of some sites, but indicates the existence of partnerships between them.
We were outraged by the fact that Beeline is trying to mislead its subscribers by providing false information about the presence of a technical problem on our side. There are no technical problems on the side of Mail.ru Group. You can make sure that everything works for us by transferring your number to any other operator, ”the holding said.
In response to this, the press service of Beeline stated that the change in routing by Mail.ru Group was to blame for the problems. They turned off the direct transmission of traffic, which is why it began to be transmitted through European servers. This was done unilaterally and without the consent of Beeline. The full statement from the press service of the operator looks like this:
1) Mail.ru Group does not have a “free channel”. This is a common channel with Beeline, organized by the parties for the convenience of users;
2) There is no "sponsorship". These are mutual symmetrical payments, the so-called peering. Channels from the Beeline side are still operational and ready to receive traffic;
3) Only Mail itself has Mail.ru Group traffic, it is not clear to whom the company sends Beeline to buy traffic. We have junctions between networks. Mail.ru Group stopped sending traffic to these joints;
4) Accusations of savings look far-fetched: we are forced to pay European operators for Mail.ru Group traffic, as the company sends traffic through Europe. On the contrary, it seems that Mail.ru Group is deliberately saving on the interests of its own customers, limiting the rights of tens of millions of people in full access to popular resources;
5) As far as prices for SMS are concerned, our relationship with Mail.ru Group in this area is irrelevant to this situation. The adjustment of tariff conditions for SMS in accordance with current market conditions affected a number of partners some time ago, and Mail.ru Group is no exception;
6) From a technical point of view, the equipment used to send SMS when using Mail.ru Group services is not related to the channel-forming and routing equipment used to access our subscribers to Mail.ru Group resources;
7) We have not received notifications from Mail.ru Group about the intention to worsen the terms of access to services for our customers.
It is not yet clear how this situation will end, but, obviously, one should not expect a quick decision.
Source: 3dnews.ru