00:0006 ноября 199800:00
9просмотров
00:0006 ноября 1998
For the second time this autumn, the retail price of city payphone cards has been raised by 50%, by Sankt Peterburgskaya Taksofony (SPT).
<BR>For the second time this autumn, the retail price of city payphone cards has been raised by 50%, by Sankt Peterburgskaya Taksofony (SPT).<BR>According to official sources, the first price increase in early September failed to achieve the desired effect the hard currency part of the telephone services' cost price grew together with the dollar exchange rate, which swelled by 238% during the crisis.<BR>SPT staff declined to quote the hard currency percentage of their service's cost price, claiming it to be a commercial secret. Some experts estimated that each telephone card costs around $1.<BR>"Apart from the hard currency cost there is one other very significant area of expenditure," says Nadezhda Onishyenko, SPT's PR manager. "This is the cards held in storage, the so-called 'insurance reserve'."<BR>"SPT has tried to compensate the price rise by reducing long-distance tariffs," says Nadezhda Onishyenko, "for example, the cost of call to Moscow used to cost 14 units per minute, and now it costs 8."
