NTA (Nepal Telecommunication Authority) board has taken key decisions to direct Nepali telecom operators to add more facilities to users in this #Covid19 pandemic situation.
As a lot of people are residing in their homes to be safe from coronavirus infection, it will be difficult to recharge and use emergency services for many customers. Considering this fact, NTA gives the directives to the telcos in providing the following facilities in bonus and credit service.
For the first time, the NTA board has conduced its meeting online and also directed the telcos to increase the credit and also the bonus on recharge. As known, they used WhatsApp for the online meeting.
Credit limit
All of the national telcos are providing this credit service some call it loan or Sapati. This service helps people to use telecom services even if they have less or no balance. As it is an emergency situation now, NTA asks the telcos to provide Rs 200 credit. They have also put a condition not to collect any service charge from the customers in using the credit service.
Although NTC provides the loan service without any service charge, Ncell charges Rs 2.55 for each loan of Rs 40. Similarly, the Smart cell charges 50 paisa for each loan of Rs 10.
These operators also limit this kind of credit services to some months old subscribers only. For Ntc, this service is applicable for 3 months old SIM card whereas it applies for older than 2 months Ncell SIM card. In the case of Smart Cell, the age of the sim card to get the credit service should be at least 6 months.
So, to facilitate all the customers, NTA shall also direct telcos to enable this credit service to all age SIM cards.
Bonus on top-up
In another facility, NTA advises the telcos to provide a 100% bonus on recharge to their customers. The percentage of such bonus on top-up is around 2 to 10% on several occasions for the telecom operators.
Technologykhabar reports quoting NTA chairman Mr. Khanal as the telecom operators need to support people in this challenging period without seeking any benefits or profit. They urge the telcos to arrange such resources at the earliest to their customers and make it valid until April 30.
Earlier NTA has requested people to use the internet reasonably in a bid to lessen the effect of huge traffic on the network.
Now we are waiting for how these telcos will enable these services in their network.
Tell us if these services will be beneficial for you to tackle Covid 19, in the comment below.
