By Charles Mgbolu
IT has been exclusively gathered from a source on the management team of leading mobile operator, MTN, that the XtraCool and XtraConnect Packages; the mobile giant’s two most popular payment tariff plans has been dropped.

CyberLIFE has since contacted the mobile company’s customer care call centre and the news confirmed. In the place of the XtraCool and Connect packages, a new MTN Pro Link and Happy Link fun link plan has been introduced respectively.

According to our investigations, the decision to drop the two packages had long been agreed upon by the management of the mobile company but was finally initiated late last week.

These drops according to the customer care representative who spoke to this reporter has triggered off a couple of changes; most especially is the family and friends programme which was running on the extraConnect package, where subscribers to the network had to register four MTN mobile numbers which they called at a  very subsidized rate. This was lost in the hacks. But then, the free mid night call that was attached to the XtraCool package had survived.

CyberLIFE  learnt that the mobile company now redirected surprised subscribers who wanted to register with any of the former packages to the newly introduced payment plans. It was also learnt that these innovations had been done for good reason as payment figures had changed considerably, especially in text messaging. Now subscribers will only pay N10 instead of the previous N15 per page for text massages going to mobile networks that is not the MTN.

The previous figure of N5 for MTN to MTN text messages was maintained. Also in close similarity to the family and friends programme is the registration of an MTN number tagged my best friend in the Pro Link plan, this number could be called free of charge during the weekends.

Although these changes have taken place, many subscribers are yet to know of the latest developments as account balance on enquiry still tells them they remain on the dropped packages.