CyTA slashes international and mobile rates

CYPRUS has the cheapest phone rates within the European Union, the telecommunications authority (CyTA) announced yesterday.

CyTA said it had made drastic reductions in landline and mobile phone telephone rates, both for international and local calls, in line with its commitment to revise and reduce phone rates for consumers.

International calls will be slashed by up to 18 per cent from February 2002, with calls to Greece set at nine cents a minute peak time and seven cents off-peak, Britain and the US at 10 cents peak and eight cents off peak, and Germany slashed to 15 cents peak and 12 cents off-peak.

However, CyTA’s Christmas bonus this year goes to all mobile users, as calls will be reduced by up to 44 per cent from today.

The SoEasy package will now cost 10 cents a local call. CyTAGSM users on the Infrequent Callers scheme will pay a £3 monthly subscription fee, and pay a rate of eight cents a minute. Standard Callers will pay a £5 subscription fee and calls will now be five cents a minute and Frequent Callers will pay a £9 subscription fee with three cents a minute calls.

The icing on the cake is the night-time scheme CyTA has introduced for all mobile phone users, except those on the SoEasy package. Between 10pm and 7am, all national calls will be charged at one cent per minute.

Text messages will now cost two cents per message for both mobile phone packages.

Attempts by CyTA to raise the cost of local calls and cut that of trunk calls to introduce a single national rate were blocked by parliament earlier this month.

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.