by Sotos » Thu Jan 26, 2006 5:36 pm
PrimeTel, the strategic partner of the EAC in the telecommunications sector is to launch its Triple Play service initially aimed at 170.000 households by the beginning of April.
Hermes Stephanou, Managing Director of PrimeTel said during the company’s first official presentation that the Triple Play service (voice, data & picture) will be competitively priced and will include may innovative services.
“Our objective is to offer customers voice, data and picture with one connection and at the same price that customers are paying now for any one of the services,” said Stephanou.
As for installation and customer service, Stephanou said PrimeTel is currently signing up associates to make the basic installation on behalf of the company, but said customer service will be maintained exclusively by the company’s staff.
With respect to the installation time, Stephanou said CyTA currently keeps PrimeTel customers waiting for 30 working days, but was quick to add that following the intervention of the Telecom Regulator, CyTA has promised to adhere to a commitment to reduce the waiting time to 5 working days.
Own Network
PrimeTel boasts its own broadband fiber optic backbone network, of 8Gbps, which interconnects the networks of Nicosia, Limassol, Larnaca and Paphos.
Having invested CYP 10 mln to rewire Cyprus and using the latest state-of-the-art equipment, PrimeTel is introducing the latest technology island-wide in Cyprus.
Being a strategic partner of the EAC, PrimeTel is sharing the EAC network for its own fiber optic cables, where available underground but mostly overhead suspended from the EAC poles and now it is bidding hard to be allowed to place its equipment at the CyTA local sub-loops to gain access to the 170.000 households that it is targeting. PrimeTel has signed an agreement with CYTA for the use of its local cable network.
PrimeTel also boasts its own international network with network nodes in Greece, the UK and Russia, where its holding company, Teledev East has been active in the Russian region for over a decade.
This allows PrimeTel to route outgoing calls to the most popular destinations on its own network, allowing it to control quality and at the same time decide on pricing.
Triple Play
Triple Play is the industry term used to describe a combined package of fixed telephony, fast and continuous access to the Internet and home entertainment services like TV, movies and video-on-demand through one single connection.
Stephanou explained that a subscriber opting to choose PrimeTel would thus save the monthly rental paid to CyTA, gain access to the Internet at speeds of up to 24Mbps using ADSL2+ (the latest technology) and watch hundreds of TV channels and films on order, play on-line games, pause and record live TV and do home shopping by the use of the remote control.
Many of the features of the Triple Play services on offer have been designed by PrimeTel and tested over the years.
Cheaper
Stephanou promised that the basic package for telephony will be 20% cheaper for local calls, 40% cheaper when both subscribers are PrimeTel customers and 30% cheaper for international calls compared to the current rates charged by CyTA.
The basic Internet package starts at a speed of 300kbps for download and 128kbps for upload but can be upgraded to speeds of 24Mbps. It will give 5 email addresses and 25Mbps space for web sites.
The basic PrimeTV package will include all the local channels, 100 satellite channels, on demand films that can be rented for 3 days at a cost of CYP 1.5 per film for new releases as well as the ability to play on-line games, place orders, record, playback and more.
“The beauty of all this is that all the three main services will be offered to the customer with one connection, one account and with the ability to upgrade at will,” said Stephanou, adding that the system has already been tested both in Cyprus while in Russia, where the group’s mother company has been active for more than a decade, the number of customers are in excess of 100.000.
