Romanian Telecom offers directory assistance service in Hungarian

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Romanian telecom offers directory assistance service in Hungarian
Marosvasarhely, Thursday, 04 August 2005 by ron Ball

On Monday, August 1 the Romanian phone company Romtelecom inaugurated a
Hungarian-language directory assistance service. The new service makes it
possible for the more than 1.5 million ethnic Hungarians in Romania to
receive basic information from their phone company in their mother tongue.
The Romanian Minister of Communication and Information Technology Zsolt
Nagy inaugurated the new service by calling one of the new
Hungarian-speaking Romtelecom operators during a press conference in the
Transylvanian city of Marosvsrhely (Trgu Mures). Nagy is one of four
Ministers of the Democratic Alliance of Hungarians (RMDSZ, UDMR) in the
Romanian Government.

Hungarian speakers can now dial 932 (+40-021-932 from abroad) to access
operator services in their language between 7 a.m. and 10 p.m. every day
of the week. The service is provided by a team of Hungarian-speaking
operators based in Brass (Brasov Kronstadt) in southern Transylvania.

Romtelecom is a former state-owned telephone company, which is now in the
hands of a Greek firm, with the Government retaining a minority share.
While the old Romtelecom had no specific policy on Hungarian-language
service, it did have Hungarian-speaking operators working in some ethnic
Hungarian regions. When the company centralised its national operator
services a few years ago, these jobs disappeared along with any trace of a
Hungarian-language service. All calls were then answered by
Romanian-speaking operators in Bucharest.

At the press conference, Romtelecom Public Relations Manager Dan Pazara
said the new service was created in response to market demand. Minister
Nagy thanked the company for responding to the needs of the 1 million
Hungarian-speaking Romtelecom customers in the country. He expressed hope
that the present service would be expanded to 24 hours a day in the near
future, and that customer demand and new technologies would make it
possible to expand the range of Hungarian-language Romtelecom services.
(Eurolang  2005)



http://www.eurolang.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2426&Itemid=1&lang=en