Rate debate

New telephone rates were announced last week and customers are far from happy. Mona El-Fiqi reports.
Consumers who have raced to keep up with constantly spiralling prices during the last few months, following repeated devaluations of the Egyptian pound against the dollar, are unhappy at another hike in phone rates.
Last week, Telecom Egypt (TE), a joint-stock company with a monopoly on fixed phone lines, announced new rates to begin in April.
Though the details were not fully clear to some, most understood the changes as a price rise.
Hisham Mohamed, an engineer, also balked at TE's claim that the changes benefit consumers, something he is sure is untrue.
Under the new system, phone bills will be paid every three months instead of six, for both even and odd phone numbers.
The new rates fix the price of a local phone call at two piastres per minute, with a three-piastre charge for use of the line per call.
"This means a 50 per cent increase. For example a six- minute local phone call will cost me 15 piastres. It is 10 piastres at current rates," said Mohamed.
Aida Ismail, head of TE's accounts department, countered that the new system is fairer as it charges per minute call-time, whereas the old system charged in six- minute increments. Under the old system, a caller speaking for one minute is charged for six minutes.
Ismail said that a TE study found that 60 per cent of local calls do not exceed two minutes, so the new system will help reduce charges. For example, after the changes, a two-minute local phone call will cost four piastres, with a three-piastre surcharge at the start of the call. This compares to a ten-piastre charge in the current system.
Ismail added that lengthy telephone calls were costly, so callers should rationalise phone use.
Consumers are unimpressed. They think the new system will charge them more, particularly as the annual fee rises from LE45 to LE60, while Internet users will pay LE1.2 per hour instead of the LE1 they pay now. Ashraf Omar, an accountant and Internet user, said, "This increase contradicts the government's policy of encouraging people to use the Internet." Ismail said that the minister of telecommunications and information had announced that the price of Internet use in the new system might be reconsidered. Another complaint was that the 1,600 minutes-worth of free local calls provided each year will go. Ismail argued that the new system offers LE10-worth of free calls a month, which translates into 500 minutes of local calls.
Another advantage of the new system, according to Ismail, is that it equalises the price of a local call in Cairo and Alexandria and other governorates.
"There should be a unified system for the whole country. The countryside rates used to be more complicated and higher than those in Cairo and Alexandria," she said.
Another reason for the new rates is that TE's prices for long-distance calls cannot compete with mobile phone prices. Ismail observed that under the old system, the price of a three-minute- long call to Aswan from Cairo was 90 piastres. From a mobile, the call costs 75 piastres.
"The new system will reduce the price to 60 piastres by day and 48 piastres by night, in addition to a five- piastre fee for using the line," said Ismail.
The new system divides long-distance calls into two groups. If a call traverses less than 60 kilometres, the charge is 10 piastres a minute by day and eight piastres at night. Over 60 kilometres, the charge is 20 piastres per minute at day and 16 piastres by night.
Customers also worry that with 6.8 million customers now paying their bills at the same time, payment outlets will be deluged.
Ismail said that TE has increased the number of outlets for paying phone bills to include sports clubs and syndicates in addition to the company's own outlets. She added that people can also pay phone bills through their bank accounts or credit cards and that the outlets will be open from the morning until 8pm.
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