ISLAMABAD, July 24: The Pakistan Telecommunications Company (PTCL) has decided to further reduce charges on nationwide (NWD) and international calls (ISD) by 25 per cent.

In an interview with this agency here on Wednesday, the PTCL chairman, Akhtar A. Bajwa, said a formal announcement about the reduction in tariff would be made within a couple of weeks.

The PTCL has also decided to extend the timing for the quarter-rate charges on calls to meet the customers’ growing demand.

He said the decision to lower the tariff was being taken to facilitate about 3.6 million subscribers of the PTCL across the country. The PTCL, last year, had reduced the long distance call charges by 50 to 60 per cent which led to increase in the company’s profit.

He contended that the PTCL was considering to extend the timing of “quarter rates” from 9:30pm to 7am. “Currently, this facility is available up to 5:30am,” he added.

“Two years back, the PTCL had internet bandwidth capacity of two mega-bit (MB) and was being provided to the internet service providers (ISPs) at $90,000 per month.

“Now it has been reduced to mere $6,000 per month,” the PTCL chairman added.

He said the internet facility had been extended to about 830 cities.—APP