Delays in Cyprus Roaming Agreement

The Cyprus Telecoms Authority, CyTA has said that the Turkish GSM networks, TurkCell and Telsim are delaying plans to allow island wide roaming for Greek and Turkish Cypriot mobile phones. CyTA spokesman Paris Menelaou told the Cyprus Mail the Turkish companies had signed a roaming agreement with CyTA and that all seemed to be going ahead as planned, with only minor technical issues remaining to be sorted out. But, according to Menelaou, the two companies began stalling after the agreement was signed, saying they were waiting for the go-ahead from the Turkish government.

The spokesman said that everything was ready within a few weeks of an agreement to allow the roaming service being signed in May. The government of the Greek half of Cyprus authorised the CyTA to talk to its counterpart, TELSEN in the northern, Turkish controlled half of Cyprus, and one of the first deals was to allow roaming on the GSM networks in each half of the island.

CyTA customers have recently been given the ability to call phone lines in the northern sector."

Posted to the site on 14th July 2003