Mobile charges go down

Kathmandu, September 16:

Starting from September 18 (Asoj 1), users of CDMA and GSM mobiles would be charged only local call rate for calls within the country.

The Nepal Telecommunication (NT) today announced that the distant charge and domestic

roaming charge for GSM and CDMA phones would be waived. This is in tune with the cabinet decision taken last month.

The existing charge for calls made from GSM post- paid mobile to GSM/CDMA mobile to other districts, except on Saturdays, would now be removed and a countrywide ATC (Air Time Charge) of Rs 3 per minute during peak hour (morning 8 am to evening 8 pm)

and Rs 1.50 per minute during off-peak hours will be introduced.

Likewise from the pre-paid mobiles, Rs 3.50 and Rs 2.50 would be charged respectively.

The charge for GSM post-paid lines on Saturdays too would be done away with and the ATC of Rs 1.50 would be charged.

The Air Time Charge cost for pre-paid would be Rs 2.50 per minute.

Similarly, the distant charge for calls made from CDMA pre-paid (Sky Phone) to other districts would be waived and the ATC charge (all seven days) will be Rs 3 per minute during peak hour and Rs 2 per minute during off-peak hour.

A press release issued by the NT today said that the changes are a step towards making telecommunication service more practical and affordable . It also said that the changes have been introduced as per the rising demand of the GSM and CDMA lines .

“This is the first step towards making NT’s service more affordable and transparent. But we still have to undertake financial and technical analysis to reach out to more people,” Sugat Ratna Kansakar, Managing Director of NT, said at a press conference organised by the NT today.

In addition, users of GSM post-paid, Post-paid C-phone and VSAT can make use of the prepaid calling card to call America and Canada through the access code 1424 for which the users would be charged Rs 8 per minute.

The NT has extended the GSM coverage to 43 districts and the CDMA coverage to 70 districts . By mid-August this year , the number of GSM users reached 9,72,588 (70,000 post-paid users) and that of CDMA was 78,856.

Meanwhile, NT has collected around Rs eight and a half lakh for flood victims through its scheme of donating through mobile calls.