Subscribers hit as NT pre-paid recharge service conks out
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KATHMANDU, SEP 22 -
Nepal Telecom pre-paid mobile subscribers had a harrowing time on Wednesday. They were neither able to recharge their balance nor could get some balance transferred. Throughout Wednesday, thousands of subscribers kept on recharging their balance, but the NT kept saying “try again later.”
Till late in the evening, NT and ZTE technicians were not been able to fix the problem spotted in a software even though top NT officials said the system could be back on track any time soon.
“We are working on it and the service will be normal as soon as we fix the problem,” said Surendra Prasad Thike, the spokesperson and deputy managing director of NT. He, however, did not specify what the problem was.
Shopkeepers and PCO owners selling recharge cards and transferring balance said the problem began early Tuesday evening. “However, mobile service had stopped accepting recharge card pin numbers since early Wednesday,” said Binod Thapa, a cyber owner at Jawalakhel, Lalitpur. He said some customers accused them of selling fake cards.
The subscribers were not the only ones have been hit. NT, too, suffered losses in revenue. During the fiscal year 2009-10, NT had earned Rs 10.66 billion from recharge cards with an average daily revenue earning of Rs 30 million.
“I tried to recharge the balance twice by buying separate cards, but in vain,” said Ramesh Shah, a pre-paid service user who could not make calls from his mobile the whole day. “How can a subscriber like me rely on the NT network when service is interrupted for such a long time?”
NT has over 5 million pre-paid mobile GSM subscribers as of last fiscal year.
A senior official at the company said that since the interruption affected the huge mass of customers as well as the income of the company, they talked to the ZTE head office about the fault in the software. “Hopefully, the problem will be solved by tomorrow morning,” the official said.
Posted on: 2011-09-22 09:21
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