Border residents face unreliable coverage and roaming charges

Residents near Latvia’s border with Belarus deal with unreliable mobile coverage, automatic connections to Belarusian networks and unexpected roaming bills, LSM’s Latgale Regional Television reported.

Viktors Piļščikovs, who runs the Klajumi horse farm, said he had paid just under 20 euros after his phone connected to a Belarusian network, despite him not crossing the border. Poor coverage at the farm can also interrupt its surveillance cameras’ internet connection.

Visitors to Klajumi, which offers horse rides in the Daugava bends and holiday-home accommodation, also find themselves connected to Belarusian networks. “During tours, I’ve heard people suddenly exclaim, ‘Oh, I’ve connected to the Belarusians,’” said farm owner Ilze Stabulniece. “It would be better if the Belarusians connected to our towers rather than us to theirs.”

Mobile operator Bite received about 75 customer complaints over the past six months about phones automatically connecting to foreign networks while users were in Latvia. The company said it compensates customers when extra costs arise without their consent because a device has connected automatically. The average compensation in such cases was about 12 euros over the same period, said Aleksandrs Beļajevs, head of Bite Latvija’s radio network department.

Piļščikovs said coverage at the farm had worsened over the past year. The network is already weak during the day, he said, but its speed and coverage drop sharply in the evenings, a problem the farm faces daily.

Krāslava municipality acknowledges that residents have grown used to communication problems in the border area, where Belarusian operators’ signals can outperform Latvian networks in some places.