| Melita Cable offers "Hello" for Lm1/month
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| Written by HiVoltage |
Sunday, 21 January 2007
As probably all of you already know, Maltacom has been offering a
package where one can get the Multiplus Free+ digital TV package for
Lm1/month (normal price) but without having to pay anything for the
receiver set top box. The catch? Well, one must agree to keep the
Maltacom telephone line along with the Multiplus package for a minimum
of 2 years. Melita Cable today announced something quite similar. All
their Cable TV subscribers can opt to get a Hello telephone line for
just Lm1/month. In this case, however, there's more than one small
catch, so I'm going to mention them all. First, similar to Maltacom's
case, one must agree to keep the Hello service along with the current
TV package (Melita Digital subscribers cannot downgrade to analogue)
for 2 years. Also, Lm24 must be paid in advance, along with Lm4.95
installation fee. That's not all however. Unlike the other Hello
packages, this new package, which by the way is named "Hello 1", does
not contain any free minutes to other local networks. Also, the call
rates are different. Basically, the rates are: free to other Hello
numbers, 1c/min to other landline networks (Maltacom and Sky), and
12c5/min to mobile networks. These rates apply 24x7. Therefore, there
are no peak, off-peak, and night rates. Just that.
After
considering everything, this might still seem like a good offer for
those who already have cable TV and don't use the telephone that much.
In order to get a better idea, we have compared the Maltacom with
Multiplus Free+ package with the new Hello 1 and Melita reception
package, for 1 TV and 1 telephone set.
Melita:
Lm3.33 monthly for TV
Lm1.00 monthly for telephony
Total for 2 years: Lm103.92 (+ 4.95 installation)
Maltacom / Multiplus:
Lm1.00 monthly for TV
Lm2.57 monthly for telephony
Total for 2 years: Lm85.68
That
just includes the basic fees. Both packages have their advantages and
disadvantages. For example, as an advantage, the Maltacom package
contains 20 free pulses monthly that must be used during the night rate
band. On the other side, the Melita package has the advantage that
local calls are charged on a per-second basis with the rate of 1c/min,
while Maltacom subscribers have to pay in chunks of 5.39c / pulse.
However, calls to Maltacom during the night band are much cheaper when
a Maltacom line is used, because a pulse is only charged every 30
minutes, and nothing is charged for the first 20 pulses. We can keep on
comparing the Melita and Maltacom rates for ever, but that would make
this article too boring. By the way, the Melita Hello 1 package is only
available until 28th February, by which time it will probably get extended "due to popular demand".
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| Last Updated ( Wednesday, 24 January 2007 ) |
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