Kcell Faces Investigation Over SMS Rates

Kazakhstan’s largest mobile operator has announced that regulators have launched an investigation into its activities, Orda.kz reports.

According to Kcell’s January – September 2025 financial statements, published on the Kazakhstan Stock Exchange website, the Almaty Department of the Agency for the Protection and Development of Competition issued an order on September 29 to open an investigation into the Kcell group of companies.

The inquiry was triggered by the company’s failure to comply with a prior regulator notification. The period under review spans January 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024.

Signs of a violation: infringement of the rights of market participants in the provision of SMS notification services, expressed in the unjustified use of international A2P SMS traffic,
 the statement says.

This suggests that Kcell may have applied higher, international-level A2P SMS tariffs instead of domestic ones.

A2P (Application-to-Person) SMS includes messages sent by banks, government agencies, online services, retailers, and marketplaces. Operators can classify them as domestic or international traffic — the latter being significantly more expensive.

Antitrust officials suspect Kcell may have artificially applied international rates to messages that should have been domestic.

The operator also reported that on October 9, it repaid a four-billion-tenge loan from Nurbank ahead of schedule.

Earlier, in August, a court dismissed a separate investigation into the company concerning potential price fixing.

Original Author: Ilya Astakhov