Artan P쳮aska
apernaska@tiranatimes.com
Albtelecom, the Albanian national telephone operator, over 90 % owned by Turkish investors, has lately introduced a new internet offer. Albtelecom says it will “refresh summer with the ADSL offer” and graphically illustrates the publicity with water being diverted over ice nestled in a glass standing ice-cold in front of a melting sun. The offer boasts to be the “best internet offer in the market” and may be confusing to a degree, since there are substantially two kinds of offers: limited and unlimited. The inexperienced or unadvised public may not understands and differentiate both offers. The new Albtelecom offer concerns especially the limited service, and even in this category the reductions are more substantial at the lowest level of the limited offer. The new offer speaks of a 40 % price reduction and quotes 1199 Albanian Lek련ALL) per month instead of the 1999 ALL per month for the lowest price offer. This corresponds to the lowest speed, lowest limit, and highest charge offer in the limited service category. While the price reduction for this sole price quotation is real, other claims are made-up.
Albtelecom publicity speaks of “doubled speed” and “free installation”. The national provider, as well as other providers, typically asks for installation fees on every subscription. But Albtelecom proposes to offer them for subscription under this offer. Whether this is a true advantage or not is difficult to say, but existing subscribers are not reminded of any particular installation effort which could justify the payment of such a fee.
On the other hand, according to comparison of Albtelecom offers from the beginning of January 2009 to the current June “refreshing” offer, technical and commercial data quoted remain the same at “256 / 64 Kbit/S / Limit: 1 Gigabyte / Over-cost 0.50 ALL/Megabyte”, not allowing thus for any first-offer “speed duplication”.
Alternative speed duplication may be reached at higher cost than the level one offer, by subscribing to the second level offer (in the limited category) which offers “512 / 128 Kbit/S / Limit: 2 Gigabytes / Over-cost 0.40 ALL/Megabyte” and which costs 2129 Albanian Lek련ALL) instead of the 2499 Albanian Lek련ALL) that it cost in January.
Unlimited offers by Albtelecom do not reflect substantial reductions in view of January or in view of competitive prices by other providers and they are still more expensive than competitors’. Some competitors do not offer limited offers at all, but the lowest Albtelecom limited offer may still be higher than at least one of the competitors’ offers if installation costs were to be excluded.
In the “make-up” box of the “bride” are other artifices like keeping prices incomplete and giving the impression of a lower price than what is the real price to be paid. Thus, prices are listed at the lowest possible quotation, because they are expressed without the Value Added Tax (VAT) which should be added mentally by the client to make the price real, complete and final, or else find himself surprised at paying the bill at the real cost.
Instead, what is refreshing and real about the offer is that the new tariffs are applicable to existing subscribers and also that, though these tariffs may not be competitive in Tirana, they give a possibility to subscribers throughout the country to hang up on the internet. The national provider seems to extend his offer to the whole country, and to places where there are no other competitors, is actually giving a lower quote than before. This is highly valuable as a lower price compared to Albtelecom’s former price, in the conditions of the absence of any competition.
