Talk:Russia/@comment-33959339-20171214013940/@comment-24682153-20171214124706

It's good that MVNOs finally arrived in Russia. Interestingly, they come from banks, both operating on Tele2:

About Tinkoff:

"You can become a client of Tinkoff Mobile from December 14 in the territory of Moscow, Moscow region, St. Petersburg and Leningrad region (coated all over Russia). Soon such an opportunity will appear in other Russian cities.

You can send an application for connection and delivery of the SIM-card online - on the Mobile.tinkoff.ru website or in the mobile application Tinkoff Mobile. It is enough to choose packages of minutes and gigabytes, pay by card and specify the date and time of delivery. Within two days the representative of Tinkoff Mobile will bring the SIM-card and will help to activate it. You can also issue a SIM-card at one of the points of sale."

To order it, you need to have a Russian address and a Russian mobile number for verifcation. This is very unsuitable for visitors. When they become more accessibles in points of sale, they might become an option. We should keep an eye on them.

About "Let's talk" by Sberbank:

"Take your passport with you and come to the sales office". This is a much better scheme for travellers. They also provide al list of sales offices.

The operator is launched in a test mode and is available for use in St. Petersburg and the Leningrad region only. Other regions are announced.

It's centered on their app which is available in Russian only making it hard for non-speakers to navigate. While I'm pretty sure they accept non-Russians too, the question remains, if they accept non-Russian payment systems (credit cards) to top up as the recharge is done only online.

So here too we should wait and see, if there will be verified reports by foreigners having been able to buy, manage and fund these SIMs.