Kathmandu, August 18:

Tired of standing in queues for paying telephone bills or finding it hard to manage time for clearing the bill? Nepal Telecom (NT) has the answer to your problems — it is all set to launch its ‘SMS telephone bill pay system’. The new system is expected to be operational in a month.

NT business manager Pramod Parmar said, “Within a month, we will introduce the new SMS system of bill payment. NT is in the process of selecting a company for the purpose.” He added that NT was trying to keep pace with the advanced global technology to help save customers the bother of fretting in queues for hours.

Managing Director of NT’s mobile service directorate Lok Raj Sharma said, “With the introduction of this system, the people will feel comfortable. Their time and travel expenses will be saved and there also won’t be scope for errors in billing. They won’t be under pressure to cut corners for paying the bill. For NT, the positive point is that bills will be paid timely.”

Talking about the homework for the SMS system of billing, Parmar said, “We will decide upon a company which will take responsibility for the SMS telephone billing system and then we will have an agreement for routing our server connection. Later, the chosen company will decide at which bank they will provide the access for SMS billing.” All the promotion campaigns and coding system will be provided by the company selected by NT for the new system of bill payment.

Focusing on the minimum criteria for NT users for getting the facility of the SMS billing system, Parmar said, “The company will provide a four-digit code to NT users of the bank that they have been given access to. The user can send message 3-4 times with the given code to the bank and can then get the bill. The payment deposit can be verified by giving the user a bank account number through SMS.

Also, the verification of balance can be made through SMS by selecting the ‘yes’ option in the mobile set.”

However, the mobile user should have an account in the bank that the company will give access to. “The charge for an SMS will be the normal rate. The system will first go through a test period in the Valley and a full phase system will be launched only after the successful completion of the test period,” Parmar added.

According to data provided by NT, there are more than two million NT customers. It has CDMA facility in 70 districts and GSM mobile service in 57 districts.

Within the last four years, NT has earned Rs 13.79 billion years. It now has three customer care employees for every 1,000 customers.