President Mustafa Akıncı convened a meeting on Friday of officials from the Information Technology and Communications Department, representatives of TRNC GSM operators and the Turkish Cypriot members of the Bi-communal Technical Committee on Economic and Commerce Matters, following the decision taken at Tuesday’s unofficial leaders’ meeting to implement mobile phone interoperability as a confidence-building measure.
A deal was reached to enable island-wide mobile telephony through separate agreements by the operators on both sides using a hub based in Europe.
President Akıncı briefed the participating members on the details of the mobile phone interoperability deal. Then steps regarding technical arrangements which will enable operators on both sides of the island to establish communication, were discussed at the meeting.
Officials and operator representatives who attended the meeting stated that there were no technical obstacles in implementing mobile phone interoperability on the basis of a model proposed by the Turkish Cypriot side four years ago, when the CBM was first agreed upon.
Officials from the President’s office and the CTP representative Fikri Toros, who previously served on the Bi-communal Technical Committee on Economic and Commercial Matters attended the meeting.
President Akıncı had announced on Tuesday that a CBM on mobile phone interoperability agreed at an earlier date, would be implemented following an agreement reached with the Greek Cypriot leader Nicos Anastasiades.
Akıncı has said that once mobile phone interoperability was established, Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots would be able to use their phones regardless on which side of the island they were located.
BRT
