Nepal Telecom, the government enterprise has announced to implement the new pulse rate (10 sec) for voice calls. The regulator, NTA has directed the operators to implement it from the New year. Following the directives, NT has published a notice for the implementation of the same. Being a government-owned company and their direct obligation to the people, NT becomes the first operator to implement a new pulse rate of 10 seconds.
Previously the pulse duration of a call was 20 seconds, which means customers were charged in multiples of 20 seconds, even if they call less than that. Suppose a customer called for 9 seconds, the charge was of 20 seconds. Now that this 10 seconds pulse has been implemented for NT, the call of 9 seconds will charge the amount of 10 seconds. This means customers will be charged less for their calls.
Do checkout: Voice Call Tariffs in Nepal Telecom.
What is the Pulse rate?
The pulse rate is the minimum duration for which the call will be charged. It is also the charge rate for a certain unit of time. If it is assigned by a telecom operator (as per the regulation) as 20 seconds, then calls up to 19 seconds will be charged with the price of that pulse. Even if the call duration is 2 seconds, the charge will be of 20 seconds. But now If the pulse rate is 10 seconds, then up to 9-sec calls will be charged at the price of that pulse.
Here is the notice in the Daily newspaper today.
What is the benefit to the customers?
For a customer, it will be beneficial to have the pulse rate as lower as possible, the lowest being 1 second. As customers need not pay for the pulse duration which they have not made calls, the cost of each call will be reduced. Customers abroad including India are being charged per the second basis that is the pulse rate is 1 second. With this, each call will only be charged only for the duration of the call they have made.
NTA, the regulator has planned to implement a pulse rate of 1 second after some periods, most probably within this year. That means customers will only have to pay for the seconds that they have called. Meanwhile, operators are resisting this plan, as they claim they are not charging of any usage of their network.
They also make claims that even if they have huge usage in their network from the moment a person dials in the network, but they can only charge after the answer is made. Technically their claim sounds logical though. But It is not known how the regulator is going to decide on the issue later.
But it is good news now for the customers that the 10-second new pulse rate has been implemented in Nepal Telecom. Other operators are known to follow suit soon.
All the voice call tariffs/rates in Nepal Telecom(Ntc), Ncell and Smart Cell
Please let us know if you feel about less charging in your mobile balance from the voice call.
