Bahrain will cut the cost of mobile telephone calls by between 13 and 26 percent and monthly rental charges by up to 40 percent, Bahrain Telecommunications Co. (Batelco) announced Thursday, December 13.
Minister of Transportation and Chairman of Batelco, Shaikh Ali Bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, recently announced unprecedented tariff cuts on a range of MobilePlus services. Effective January 1, 2002, the tariff reductions will apply to registration, per minute rates, monthly rental charges, SMS tariffs, Mobile VoiceMail access, ‘Internet Over Mobile’ service as well as a number of miscellaneous services, stated a company press release.
“Mobile PostPaid registration will be slashed by 43 percent and monthly rental charges will be reduced by up to 40 percent. Regular package customers, for example, whose current monthly rental tariff is 10 Bahraini dinars ($26.5) will now save four BD under the new tariff cuts.
Depending on a customer’s mobile package, post paid peak call charges will be reduced by up to 16 percent and by up to 13 percent on off-peak rates. Sim call charges will be reduced by 26 percent and, for the first time, off-peak rates of 47 percent of the current per minute charge will be introduced; thereby bringing the peak rate to 70 fils per minute and the off-peak rate to 50 fils per minute," said Shaikh Ali.
Batelco cut international direct dialing rates by an average of 14 percent in September as part of its effort to boost investment in the Gulf state. The mobile telephone market in Bahrain soared 54 percent last year and by October there were 283,000 subscribers, the second-highest per capita in the Middle East, AFP reported.
The Bahraini government has a 39 percent stake in the monopoly company, with Britain's Cable and Wireless holding 20 percent and the remaining 41 percent publicly traded. — (menareport.com)
© 2001 Mena Report (www.menareport.com)
