A total of 21,000 telephone subscribers have cancelled the PhoneMail service, Maltacom officials said yesterday. They described the figure as low, given that there were 207,000 telephone lines.

Details were given at a highly charged press conference, during which the phone company`s management defended the service after Maltacom was slammed by several quarters for having imposed it rather than offering it as an option.

The officials announced that while subscribers always had the option of asking the company to cancel the service to their sets, they would now be able to deactivate it themselves.

As of today, customers may deactivate PhoneMail by pressing #62# on their phone. To activate it again, subscribers may press *62#.

PhoneMail is an answering service that takes messages for subscribers automatically whenever one is unable to answer the telephone, or when one is on another call.

Several subscribers who accessed the service initially protested that they were being charged 5 cents per call, as they did not know that the charge was only imposed 10 seconds after the voice system kicked in.

The company announced last week that those who deposited messages during April and May in a PhoneMail box of another subscriber would not be charged for the call,

Another voice prompt has been added to the PhoneMail message, advising customers to hang up if they do not want to incur charges.

Maltacom chief executive Stephen Muscat said there were an estimated 93,000 queries made to the PhoneMail freephone number, the vast majority of which were for more information about the service.

Mr Muscat hit out at comments made by the Malta Communications Authority which said that the service should have been optional rather than imposed, and that its introduction was "ill-timed".

He said that the Maltacom licence clearly stated that the company could offer voice mail on an exclusive or non-exclusive manner.

He explained that since last August, Maltacom started providing a free voice mail service to all those who applied for a new line.

Take-up and usage of Voice Mail was encouraging to the extent that until last March, an average of 95,000 messages were being deposited in the voice boxes each month.

Mr Muscat expressed his disappointment that, despite being sent an invitation, several of those that had written in the media against the service had not bothered to attend yesterday`s press conference.

Maltacom chairman Maurice Zarb Adami denied that it had been a mistake to provide the PhoneMail service to all telephone subscribers.

Asked whether he believed the controversy boiled down to the fact that the public in general was slow to react to developments in the telecoms sector, Mr Zarb Adami said that this was not the case.

He said the public had openly welcomed the introduction of mobile phones, together with all the services offered, such as short message services.