Making telephone calls is relatively straightforward, though the OTE (Organismós Tiliepikinoníon tís Elládhos, the state-run telecom) has historically provided some of the worst service in the EU. However, since the mid-1990s this has improved drastically, and rates have dropped dramatically, under the twin threats of privatization and competition from thriving local mobile networks.

All land-line exchanges were supposed to become digital ( psifiak?) by 2002, but you may still encounter a few pulse-analogue ( palmik?) exchanges. When ringing long-distance on such circuits, you must wait for a critical series of six electrical crunches on the line after dialling the country or Greek area code, before proceeding.

Call boxes , poorly maintained and invariably sited at the noisiest street corners, work only with phonecards; these come in four sizes - 100 units, 200 units, 500 units and 1000 units - and are available from kiosks and newsagents. Not surprisingly, the more expensive cards are the best value in terms of euros per unit. Despite numbers hopefully scribbled on the appropriate tabs, call boxes cannot be rung back; however, green, countertop cardphones kept by many hotels can be rung.

If you won't be around long enough to use up a phonecard (the cheapest is about ?3), it's probably easier to make local calls from a períptero or street kiosk . Here the phone may be connected to a meter (if not, there'll be a sign saying móno topik?, "local only"), and you pay after you have made the call. Local, one-unit calls are reasonable enough (about ?0.15 for the first three minutes), but long-distance ones add up quickly.

Other options for calling include a bare handful of counter coin-op phones in bars, kafenía and hotel lobbies; these should take small euro coins - probably five-cent, ten-cent, twenty-cent and fifty-cent denominations - and, unlike kerbside phone boxes, can be rung back. Most of them are made in northern Europe and bear instructions in English. You'll probably want to avoid making long-distance calls from hotel rooms , as a minimum one-hundred-percent surcharge will be slapped on.

For international ( exoterik?) calls , it's again best to use kerbside cardphones. You can no longer make metered calls from Greek telecoms offices (the OTE) themselves - most keep daytime hours only and offer at most a quieter cardphone or two. Like BT Phoneshops in the UK, they are mainly places to get Greece-based service (including OTE's own mobile network Cosmote), pay your bills, and buy one of an array of phones and fax machines for sale. Faxes are best sent from post offices and some travel agencies - at a price; receiving a fax may also incur a small charge.

Overseas phone calls with a 100-unit card will cost , approximately, ?0.40 per minute to all EU countries and much of the rest of central Europe, North America and Australia - versus ?0.28 per minute on a private subscriber line. There is no particular cheap rate for overseas calls to these destinations, and dialling countries with problematic phone systems like Russia, Israel or Egypt is obviously rather more. Within Greece , undiscounted rates are ?0.16 per minute on a subscriber line, rather more from a cardphone; a twenty-percent discounted rate applies daily from 10pm to 8am, and from 10pm Saturday until 8am Monday.

Charge-card call services from Greece back to the home country are provided in the UK by British Telecom (tel 0800/345144, www.chargecard.bt.com ) and NTL (ex-Cable & Wireless, tel 0500/100505); in North America, Canada Direct, AT&T (tel 0800/890 011, then 888/641 6123 when you hear the AT&T prompt to be transferred to the 24-hr Florida Call Centre), MCI and Sprint; in Australia, Optus (tel 1300/300 937) or Telstra (tel 1800/038 000), and in New Zealand Telecom NZ (tel 04/801 9000). There are now a few local-dial numbers with some providers which enable you to connect to the international network for the price of a one-unit call, and then charge the call to your home number - usually cheaper than the alternatives.

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