Etisalat dials in per-second rate for local calls New rate for international calls from today

Wasel pre-paid subscribers will be charged 0.5 fils per second for local calls

Mobilk - From today (Nov 13) Etisalats pre-paid Wasel customers will be charged per second for local calls. 

This means that a customer only needs to pay for the exact number of seconds used on a call.

This simplifies the billing process and maximises savings for the customer making it easy to calculate the cost of each local or international call, as per statement made by Etisalat earlier.

In addition to per-second billing, Etisalat also announced a new rate for international calling. "Subscribers of Etisalats new Wasel prepaid plan can choose from more than 200 international destinations to call for as low as 99 fils per minute during off-peak hours and all day on Friday," it stated.

Commenting on the introduction of the new Wasel plan, Seleh Al Abdooli, Etisalats CEO said: "At Etisalat, we are spending more and more time talking to our customers and listening to what they want.

"We are constantly evaluating their feedback and driving changes in our technology and service offerings so that we can meet their expectations.

"The new per-second billing plan offered on the countrys widest HSPA+ and 4G mobile networks certainly offers a compelling proposition in terms of call quality, experience and price."

Wasel pre-paid subscribers will be charged 0.5 fils per second for local calls.

Existing Wasel pre-paid customers can activate their per-second billing plan free of charge by simply dialing *140#.

New Wasel pre-paid subscribers will enjoy the new mobile tariff automatically, Etisalat explained.

The per second billing is by many considered an advantage to the monthly bill as short calls tend to be made more often than lengthy conversations.

However, businesspeople often prefer the per-minute rating, which would benefit the longer calls.

But in this case the charge for local calls did not change, explains a spokesperson of Etisalat.

"The per-minute rate is 30 fils, which equals 60 times 0.5 fils. This was the case before the per-second rate introductions and is still the case.

"The only thing that changed is the fact that customers will be charged per second instead of per minute. This is something customers had been asking for and it is now here."