New mobile operator pushes prices down slightly

The arrival of the fourth mobile telephone operator - 4ka - has caused some mobile phone charges to go down and introduced cheaper mobile internet, however, the charges in neighbouring Austria and Hungary are still lower than in Slovakia. This was reported in the Pravda daily newspaper on Monday. The operator, 4ka, has influenced charges concerning pre-paid cards but not mobile tariffs. If there were expectations that this year's Christmas offer from operators, which traditionally conclude hundreds of thousands of new contracts in November and December, will feature lower charges in the wake of the arrival of the new player to the market, they were proven wrong, writes the daily. Pravda was comparing Christmas discounts and tariffs of operators active in Slovakia with their counterparts in Austria, Hungary and Poland. Slovaks still pay significantly more for mobile services than their neighbours. According to 4ka's website, one megabyte of data costs four cents, however this is still much more expensive than in neighbouring Austria. "The services from Slovak mobile phone operators are still expensive in comparison with Austria. In Austria, with a pre-paid card, one minute of conversation is charged at 3.9 cents. The same charge is used for an SMS text message. One megabyte of data costs roughly a single cent", the daily learned from Kristina, a Slovak living in the Austrian village Breitensee. The headline of the article read "Telephone services still expensive. Christmas discounts won't help".