Kathmandu, August 18

Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) is preparing to devise a regulatory framework to manage mobile value added service (M-VAS). It plans to bring a licensing provision to regulate service providers within the current fiscal year.

After the number of users of mobile phone and internet increased heavily in the last couple of years, the trend of using such services has gone up and telecom companies and a number of third party content providers are involved in the business. However, the government so far has no clear rules to regulate such services and their tariffs, according to NTA officials.

M-VAS refers to services beyond the standard voice calls and SMS offered by telecom companies. Telecom companies are offering such services ranging from simple ring tones to crucial banking transactions.

“Many services related to mobile banking, heath and agriculture, among others are being provided to customers,” said Achyuta Nanda Mishra, assistant spokesperson for NTA. He said that due to lack of a legal framework, it has been difficult to protect consumers and service providers.

As a result of the failure to regulate VAS, customers have time and again been facing problems of receiving unwanted messages and there is also no clear guideline on how much to charge from a customer for a particular service. Existing rules also require each VAS to be approved by NTA along with appropriate tariff. However, despite this provision, the authority has been issuing permit to the tariffs proposed by companies without considering the impact on customers and the practice in international markets.

Mobile VAS is also one of the sources of income for telecom companies. Two years ago too, NTA had proposed a plan to the Ministry of Information and Communications to bring a mechanism to manage VAS. However, it had failed to make any headway.

At present, dozens of services including missed call alerts, call ring back tone, pin request for recharge, weather information, news, song dedication, horoscope, m-health, e-banking, m-banking, bank enquiry, mobile payment, load-shedding schedule, and SMS poll, among others are being provided by telecom companies. Fundamentally, services like SMS, MMS and mobile data services also fall under VAS.

Generally, telecom companies and third-party VAS providers having agreement on short-code with operators provide VAS. Short code SMS-based VAS service is more famous, according to NTA. There are also complaints from consumers of receiving unwanted messages. Messages sent by VAS service providers with no customer agreement to receive while subscribing to the service, and messages that are not about similar products or services offered by telecom companies are considered spam.