Cable TV's phone network to be launched next week
By Hadar Horesh
The cable television companies plan to launch their commercial telephone network, HOT Telecom, during next week's Telecom 2004 exhibition.
The firms also are expected to announce the commercial launch of their Video on Demand (VoD) service next week. Until now, the VoD service has been operating on an experimental basis, in the Sharon region only.
According to the companies' agreement with the Antitrust Authority, the telephone service, which will compete directly against Bezeq, has to be launched by the end of the month. However, they decided to bring the launch forward a bit due to the exhibition.
Initially, however, the service apparently will be available only selectively rather than to all comers. Within three years, it is slated to be available to 97 percent of the country's residents.
HOT's telephone service will be delivered via the Internet, making it technologically simpler to install than Bezeq's traditional landlines. Customers who wish to sign up with HOT will have to buy a modem costing several hundred shekels. After that, they will pay only a flat monthly fee, with no per-minute charges.
Bezeq, in contrast, levies both a monthly fee and a charge for each individual call.
Bezeq will also have a booth at Telecom 2004, but the cellular firms are boycotting the exhibition to protest the Communications Ministry's decision to lower interconnection fees for calls between two cellular networks. The decision is expected to cost the firms some NIS 2.5 billion a year.
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