GRTU objects to higher phone rent

The GRTU - Chamber of Small and Medium Enterprises has appealed to the Malta Communications Authority to revise its decision to approve an increase in the rental fee for telephone lines charged by Maltacom.

The GRTU said the authority should consider the country's real needs, in that small businesses were in a continuous struggle to lower costs and increase competitiveness while sustaining the jobs they provided.

This, it said, could not be done if burdens, which mostly affected the weak, continued to increase.

The MCA last week approved Maltacom's request to drastically cut rates for international phonecalls and increase its rental fee by 1c3 a day.

The GRTU argues that at a time when the market was dominated by mobile phones, it would have made more sense to have a system of paying for calls by the second and doing away with the rental fee.

In proposals it had made to the MCA, the GRTU had insisted that Maltacom should not shift the burden of the losses it was suffering from international calls - compared to the exaggerated profits it used to make - to local calls, by increasing rent on the telephone line.

It said it had expected the MCA to give more attention to its proposals rather than ignoring them completely.