Under the new offer, AKTEL post-paid subscribers will enjoy reduced and flat rates nationwide without any inter-zonal or roaming charges from now on, the company officials said at a press conference in Dhaka yesterday.

Savings of more than 50 percent on call charges on three selected numbers under "Friend 'n' Family Talk Plan", convenient bill payment through SMS (Short Messaging Service) with pre-paid scratch card, bill information through SMS and international SMS facility to more than 500 operators globally are some of the features of the new offer.

Under the new tariff structure, one second pulse will cost only 5.84 paisa in peak hours (8am to 8pm), 4.16 paisa in off-peak hours (8pm to 12pm) and 2.5 paisa in night bird hours (12pm to 8am).

"So, a subscriber will be charged according to his total outgoing talktime whether it is 16 seconds or 36 seconds," said Vijay Watson, chief operating officer of AKTEL, while announcing the offer.

When a subscriber's airtime usage bill will be more than Tk2000, he will be awarded a cent percent discount on his monthly line rent for that month. The discount will be 50 percent if the airtime usage bill is between Tk1500 and Tk2000, he said.

The company also reduced line rent for Standard connection from Tk500 to Tk300 and from Tk200 to Tk150 for MobileLink connection.

Presently, AKTEL has more than 1.5 million subscribers including 100,000 post-paid subscribers, the company officials said.

Jose Ravee, general manager (Marketing), Sania Mahmood, assistant general manager (Marketing), Abraham Kaikobad, senior marketing manager, and Rajandra Kumar Nath, chief financial officer of AKTEL, also attended the function.