Kathmandu, April 14

The direction given by the government to domestic telecom companies to reduce their mobile pulse duration of calls has come into effect from today.

While Nepal Telecom (NT) has started implementing new mobile pulse duration for calls, other telecom companies are in the process of doing so.

The telecom sector regulator — Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) — had directed domestic telecom operators to reduce their mobile pulse duration for phone calls to 10 seconds from today.

NTA had directed telecom operators in the country to bring down the pulse duration of mobile calls in two phases — to 10 seconds from April 14 and to one second from October 18.

“We have brought down pulse duration for all calls to 10 seconds starting today for all our pre-paid and post-paid SIM subscribers,” Prativa Vaidhya, spokesperson for NT, told The Himalayan Times.

However, the largest private telecom service provider Ncell has not decided over the new pulse duration for its calls until today. NT and Ncell cover more than 90 per cent of the telecommunication market in the country. Other telecom operators, namely UTL, Smart Telecom, Nepal Satellite Telecom and STM Telecom have also not decided on new pulse duration for calls.

NTA Spokesperson Min Prasad Aryal said that none of the telecom operators, except NT, has notified the authority about the new pulse duration of calls.

“We have given a direction that all telecom companies must bring down pulse duration of calls,” he said, adding NTA will soon start cross-checking pulse duration of calls among telecom companies.

Meanwhile, NTA Chairman Digambar Jha said that NTA would give one more week to telecom companies to implement the new pulse duration.

“As reducing pulse duration of calls requires different software upgradation by telecom companies, we will wait for a week more,” he said. “NTA will begin checking billing system of telecom firms after a week to ensure that they have reduced pulse duration of calls.”

As per Jha, NTA is also planning to direct telecom firms to start sending messages to their customers on completion of each phone call with the actual call duration and levied tariff. “This will help the customers themselves to check whether or not telecom firms are charging customers as per the duration of the call made,” he added.

Pulse duration refers to the minimum billing unit of phone calls. Currently, mobile pulse is fixed at 20 seconds. This means that a mobile user needs to pay charges equivalent to 20 seconds even if he or she makes a call that is for a

duration of less than 20 seconds. As telecom companies will have to reduce mobile pulse to one second from October 18, this will ensure that users are charged for the exact duration of each call.