Cyprus-Forum.com

[MarsdenCuckoo]

No knowledge of Areeba but got to admit am beginning to wonder about Cytanet......

1. Landline - whilst very quick to get it installed - more often than not it takes far too long to get through to speaking to anyone in customer services and when you do all they do is refer you to someone else - generally asking you to call again (and get into another queueing system.... arghh!!)

2. Mobile - have just discovered that if I ring an International no. and don't get through I still get charged.... is that normal?

[callmered]

areeba is not good, only a little cheaper than CYTA, but signal are not well covered.
u can visit www.cytamobile-vodafone.com.cy u can find everything u need there

This is a completely wrong statement. Areeba is excellent, I use it for two years and only had minor problems in the start. Coverage is actually better than CYTA because you have the option of roaming on CYTA without any added cost but with CYTA if you do not have signal you cannot roam on Areeba. Also from areeba you have excellent internet services, 3G broadband for 30 pounds a month unlimited, mobileTV, friends(talk for free with up to free friends) etc. CYTA is crap in customer service and pay as you talk is about 20% more expensive.

actually im working in telecomunication field and cytagsm used to be awful before 2005, and now its getting much better. thou lots of people dislike cyta but we must admit there r much more basestations than areeba. cyta has much better coverage and stronger signals, in lots of area areeba is using cyta's basestation and transmissions, what impressed me most is that cytagsm has a very fast connection spd to international #s. about pricing u can find them by visiting website of both. actually on most calls areeba is slightly cheaper than cyta.
if areeba is that good why less than 10% of people are using them?

[elena09]

i have been customer of cyta for 6 years now, and my family have been connected with cyta for more than that.
but i'm seriously considering to change to areeba, it offers much more than cyta, e.g: 900min for 19/month. something that cyta does not provide. and also, calls by areeba cheaper/min than cyta. also, they cut at least £100 off mobile handsets if you subscribe to a certain offer. And these are just examples of the many Areeba offers. Why not join areeba?
I think most people do not switch companies, and as said less than 10% of people are using areeba bcoz cyta has been around for years and i believe people do not trust other services enough to subscribe to them since their traditional provider is good.
Also, people have not been provided with enough info about new services. Everything i know is bcoz i look up everything on the internet. Not many cypriots use the internet, since the internet has not been introduced in cyprus for many years, and just now services have started to provide vital info via the internet. Also, computers not very popular wth middleage people, i can see that from my family and friends. Most population of cyprus using the net are young people, (always with some exceptions of course).
Oh, and as we all know, middleage people are a bit KSEROJEFALI!!!

[Strahd]

if areeba is that good why less than 10% of people are using them?

Well if you read the latest reports on mobile telephony sector in Cyprus the market share of Areeba is now 12% and rising steadily. The Cyprus mobile comms market is a very difficult for competitors because there was 99% market share by CYTA before areeba started operations about 2 years ago. This means that this 12% has actually shifted to the new operator and CYTA now has droped to 88% market share.

In addition CYTA was a complete network long before Areeba put up their first base station. Since you are in the sector you can easily understand then that a new untested network will surely have some problems when it begins and you cannot cover the whole of Cyprus with GSM in just a few months. Years are required to do this and actually CYTA did it in a period of more than 7 years. Areeba now covers about 70% of the geographical area of the free ROC and this in only 2 years.

All these things plus, from my point of view, some not very agressive marketing Areeba has not succeeded the miracle(which actually is not because CYTA is a public organisation, slow and not very efficient), eg. achieveing a 30% market share in 2 years in a market whihc already had 100% penetration from a single monopoly operator.

CYTA is an extremely small organization which is used to is monopoly and is based on tradionalism beeing sure that because it is CYTA it will never go under. However Areeba belongs to MTN the largest mobile communications group in Africa nad middle east with more tha 30 million subscribers and 25 networks Areeba Cyprus beeing the 1/10 of the smallest.

So unless they change their philosophy soon (CYTA) they are destined to end up as Cyprus Airways... non profitable.

[callmered]

Areeba's progress was impressive, but sharing 30% of the market that will not happen.

To be honest, Areeba's mission is only to make the market more competitive, pathetic isnt it? so are otenet, spidernet... actually cyta can beat them with ease but the gov realise that cyta need these non-aggressive competitors to improve the country's standard of service.

furthermore telecommunication now is a basic, important and profitable area and also for security reasons that CY gov wont let this happen and its the same in most countries.

areeba's scale is getting bigger and bigger but it is still relying to cyta like basestations and transmissions, cyta has more roaming aggreements with other operators than areeba. it has total tele solution but all areeba got is mobile system. it'll be service-oriented world in telecommnication market in the following yrs, cyta will take much bigger advantages by binding with vodafone live.

[callmered]

No knowledge of Areeba but got to admit am beginning to wonder about Cytanet......

1. Landline - whilst very quick to get it installed - more often than not it takes far too long to get through to speaking to anyone in customer services and when you do all they do is refer you to someone else - generally asking you to call again (and get into another queueing system.... arghh!!)

2. Mobile - have just discovered that if I ring an International no. and don't get through I still get charged.... is that normal?

1. agree

2. its hard to say, maybe cyta, maybe operator on the other end, maybe intermediate operators...

[Biker]

areeba is not good, only a little cheaper than CYTA, but signal are not well covered.
u can visit www.cytamobile-vodafone.com.cy u can find everything u need there

Have you actually used an Areeba mobile?:roll:

I and my wife have been with areeba since January 2005 and have had no problems, in the course of my work I go all over Cyprus, including through Troodos.

[callmered]

areeba is not good, only a little cheaper than CYTA, but signal are not well covered.
u can visit www.cytamobile-vodafone.com.cy u can find everything u need there

Have you actually used an Areeba mobile?:roll:

I and my wife have been with areeba since January 2005 and have had no problems, in the course of my work I go all over Cyprus, including through Troodos.

last yr i purchased an areeba SIM to send SMS to China, and it turns out its Chinamobile's fault. anyway at 1st i thought areeba should be much cheaper, but after i check on website it's just slightly cheaper. btw at that time areeba's website was very slow. most important is areeba's connection and quality of voice is not as good as CYTA, so i sold my SIM for 5p. i am not saying areeba is bad just not as good as cyta. if theres a choice and i'll pick cyta just like most of the cypriots.

[orokliniservices]

i agree cyta has horrible cust service but good rates

[Strahd]

areeba's connection and quality of voice is not as good as CYTA

Well where do you base that????

CYTA is using half rate GSM everywhere... areeba is using full rate therefore by default the quality of sound is much better if you are calling from areeba to areeba... this is something everyone has noticed. Unless of course you are using CYTA radio which only rarely happens anymore since areeba has blocked all roaming in the Nocosia area and is now covering most of the island.

As for the SMS well if you indeed are in telecoms business you should know better. For an SMS to be submitted through to a foreign network an interworking agreement needs to be in place between the two networks or your SMS can be delivered through an international SMS gateway. However the foreign network might actually block your SMS unless you have the interworking agreement in there.

How do you expect a less than two years old carrier to have interworking agreements with all the networks a 10 year carrier has.

Finally as for competition in Cyprus you seem to ignore that EU does not allow the state control telecom carriers. Cyta will slowly be privatised and loose its immense pool of money they had. Overstaffing will soon pay its toll and if not partially privatised like OTE in greece it will very quickly become like cyprus Airways...