Kathmandu, April 23:

Pay phone booths and Internet cafes are known for devising ways to dodge payment of actual dues to telecom companies.

The most recent case of misuse that has come to light is that of the LST 2500 model of the United Telecom Ltd. The country’s first private player in the telecom sector, which recently got into an expansion mode, is now reportedly focussing its energies into curtailing misuse of this model.

LST 2500 which happens to be a tower model, point out sources, is easy to be misused by way of call by-pass, hence making the company incur huge losses.

Dismissing rumours that the company had altogether stopped the sale of this model, UTL’s chief executive officer N R Mokhariwala, said, “We are simply restricting the sale of this model by checking the credentials of subscribers and preferring to give them to only, say, government officials, journalists or professionals.”

The CEO confirmed the company currently has a good stock of the model but has decided to hold on to them. He confessed that the tower model could be conveniently used by unscrupulous people to evade payment of actual dues. However, the other table model, LSP was doing well as it had little scope to tamper with calls and hence payments to the company.

While it is only now that the telecom company has woken up to rein in this gross misuse of its CDMA phones, sources claim, pay phone booth owners and Net Cafes have been doing brisk business over this misuse of LST 2500 right from its introduction.