Paphos Life

Found out yesterday that, without any advance notification, Cyta have discontinued the above service for very cheap overseas calls. They say there is an alternative available which allows various plans for various numbers of minutes of calls per month at a fixed price. Very disappointing attitude not to give advance notice as my wife's father is in his mid 90's, not in the best of health and looks forward to their chats.

Paul.

Use Skype, Snapchat or facebook messenger. Doesn't cost a bean then.

You can call UK landlines for approx 5 euros a month or landlines and mobiles for 13 euros a month (unlimited calls) via Skype.

It is NOT the usual Skype call where you both need internet etc, you just sign up (and can cancel at any time) and can call using Skype on any device with internet to a normal phone in the UK (I think it is available for other countries as well, but have never needed that).

I have used it for the past 7 years and made literally thousands of calls as I used to do telesales for a UK company and have no problems, there is no echo etc, just a normal call. The only possible issue is that it comes up as number unknown on the recipients phone and some landlines are programmed not to accept these calls due to the high number of sales calls in the UK.

Certainly worth a look if you make a high number of UK calls

Thanks for the suggestions we actually use What'sApp for most of our international calls but the father in law won't use a mobile, tablet or computer of any nature.

Also affects me as my Mother is in a nursing home in the UK and speaking to her on the telephone is our only means of communication.

It is inevetable that this would happen. The 1018 service routed calls over the internet rather then the telephone network, and was cheaper. However, CYTA is converting all landlines from telephony to VOIP (the internet). If they continued the cheaper internet calls they would lose a considerable amount of income. Not surprising then that they would bring internet calls up to the same charge as telephony calls.