Lagos — Still waxing stronger, pioneer wireless phone operator, MTS FirstWireless, weekend introduced what the company call the cheapest international call rates among competition, especially to United States (US) and Canada, which is now N15 per minute.

MTS FirstWireless said the new tariffs are coming on the heels of its recent commissioning of the MTSFirst network in Ibadan and commercial launch of Abeokuta network about a month earlier as well as base station at the Alaba International Market Lagos.

The operator said that the new international call tariffs take immediate effect on the network as calls to the USA, Canada and Netherlands are now N15 per minute, while call to China is now N19 per minute.

Calls to Italy, Ireland, and Germany are now N16 per minute whereas calls to United Kingdom (UK) are currently N17 per minute.

Chief Marketing Officer of MTSFirst, Ms Uche Ofodile, while announcing this development in slash, said tariffs to countries with the highest call volumes were reduced. These countries also include South Africa and Ghana with new rates of N23 and N25 per minute, respectively.

She also said the reduction was in line with the vision of the company to continue to make services affordable to all subscribers on the network.

"The vision to make services more affordable to all our subscribers will continue to guide our decisions as we rapidly expand the network to reach more communities", she said.

With this, subscribers to the MTSFirst network, she explained, would still enjoy free access to voice mail services, toll free calls for credit check and customer care inquiries in addition to free monthly access charge.

MTSFirst is a national telecoms operator licensed to provide wireless telephony services, national long distance communications services, international data gateway services and internet services since 1992.

The operator re-launched its wireless services port folio on a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA 2000 1x) technology in August 2004.