Telephone subscribers who deposited messages during April and May in a PhoneMail box of another subscriber would not be charged for the call, Maltacom said.

The company said this was being done to enable subscribers to familiarise themselves with the service.

It said it was evaluating comments made in order to improve the service.

The new service was sharply criticised by many subscribers who accused Maltacom of imposing the service.

PhoneMail is a new answering service that takes messages for the subscriber automatically whenever one is unable to answer the telephone.

On Friday, Maltacom announced that a voice recording within the 10-second time-frame would now notify the caller in both Maltese and English that he may terminate the call at once if he did not wish to leave a message in PhoneMail and incur charges.

Secondly, when a phone line is busy, the call will not be transferred immediately to PhoneMail, as had been the norm in recent days.

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