Important service numbers

Namaste!

We have often been asked why Ncell customers don’t have access to important service numbers.

The scope of the important numbers can be a toll free number, a number which is not charged to where there is a charge based on service provided. Based on your feedback, we have identified the following numbers as important numbers:

              Description                                      Important numbers

1            Police Emergency                            100

2            Fire Brigade                                     101

3            Ambulance                                       102

4            Valley Traffic Police                         103

5            Police Headquarters                        1113

6            NTC telephone enquiry                    197

7            Child Helpline                                   1098

8            Hello Sarkar                                     1111

Today, Ncell customers can call to 2 toll free numbers – Police Emergency (100) and Ambulance (102).

However, we are facing challenges in getting the other important numbers and those challenges are due to the terms and policies related to those numbers , inadequate infrastructure that does not  allow simple plug in to different Operators or something as simple as finding the owners for the individual numbers.

The ownership of Police Emergency   is with Nepal Police and that of Ambulance is with Nepal Ambulance Service - meaning there is no centralized regulatory body governing all the important numbers and making connection mandatory to all the Operators in Nepal.  This is one of the major policy loop holes when it comes to access to these numbers.

At present, only Nepal Telecom has access to all the above listed numbers but if another Operator wants to get an access to all the available numbers then we have to start from ground zero. This can be from setting up new equipments at owner’s premises or laying fibre cable or doing both to get an access. Most importantly, we have to comply with the existing set up for these numbers and most of these numbers lack proper expansion plan. The implementation can take 4 to 8 months.

This is where we see that NTA has a very important role to play. Firstly, in defining a standard number plan for all the possible important numbers along with it building an infrastructure that centralizes access to all the existing or any new important numbers in future. Secondly, to make integration to all these important numbers mandatory to all the Operators.

Definitely, we can’t wait for the above to happen soon so we have initiated discussion with the owners of the remaining numbers and few are in process to be initiated.  We are now in the phase of understanding the setup and expansion plan for Women & Children trafficking (1098) and Fire Brigade (101) . We will then devise implementation plan and get these numbers rolling. The implementation of the remaining numbers will also happen but step wise.

Thanks Milee putting this information available to our valued customers!

Regards,

Pasi

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New data scheme

Namaste!

As promised at the last post, since last week we have had the poll for new data tariffs at Facebook. So far, about 1000 responds make your message clear: 46% of you like the 500 MB package, priced at 399 Rupees. Second favorite is the 40 MB (32% support) at 99 Rupees and third place went to daily pack with 3 MB and 6 Rupees. All the bigger packages have planned to have one month validity, with same price for Connect and normal SIM as is fair. Please log in to FB, go to Ncell fan site and give your votes plus valuable comments. Next week we go to NTA and ask for the permission to launch.

Today there were pretty good news for the telecom of Nepal. Firstly, we get more players to the market when so called universal license conditions was released. It means that so far regional operators can have national license too, by paying the 20 B lisence renewal fee. The other initiative is about infra sharing between operators: if we have built the tower somewhere, other operator can install their antennas etc. at the same tower with certain conditions and vice versa. This will help reduce the cost of investment and hopefully prices to you. Other thing is that we are not aware of the conditions and it might good to ask our opinion about what, when and how in order to make this a positive, concrete win-win for all the stakeholders. At the same time, the famous import license for radio parts is still pending, now for almost five months; e.g. our antennas is waiting in Lhasa for couple of weeks in trucks! Maybe we built our towers in Tibet;)

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Internet Issues

Namaste! And Happy first of May to everyone!

During last couple of weeks we have been discussing internally a lot about internet issues. Thanks to your feedback too, we try find a new approach to the offering of mobile internet. The success and your demand for Ncell Connect and GPRS surfing has been positive but so far we do not seem to find a proper mechanism of pleasing most of the people what it comes to packages and pricing of mobile internet. Let me repeat couple of earlier said features when talking about radio based internet:

·       The speed depends (signal strength) on type of building, windows, form of the building, trees or other buildings  shadowing your location towards the base station

·       Optimal speed is possible to get 100-200 meters from the nearest base station, then the weakening signal start reducing the speed: variation can be quite significant

·       During load shedding, sometimes a base station can drop off. We do not have DG in every BS, and when next BS takes over, signal and speed goes down

·       If the number of users connected to same BS is high, you all share the capacity of that BS and again, speed will be slower. Especially in the earlier case where number of all BS on air is reduced. We see peak in users between 9pm and 11pm, to get better speed please avoid these "after evening news" hours.

·       All and all, the radio signal carrying the internet connection is a living organism which is quite challenging to optimize to all

·       Capacity of radio waves is limited according to law of physic’s and therefore, we are unable to offer unlimited internet connection. If we would, couple of people downloading lot of data (like moviesJ) can “eat” the whole spectrum and the rest of you would be very very angry!

We do recognize the need for more base stations to improve the overall capacity in the network. We have plus 200 more to come, unfortunately the radio parts have been stored couple of months in Lhasa to be imported,  waiting the import license from the Ministry of Communication. No laws have changed, we have been following existing legislations for past four years and this time the issue is only about linking microwave frequencies. Hope to get the license soon so you can get better quality and connectivity.

To serve you better, we are now doing home work on calculating existing and hopefully soon increasing capacity to find an ideal model of offering right packages with right prices. As the building of capacity in Nepal is more expensive than elsewhere (geography of Nepal, need for DG plus maintenance and fuel), unfortunately we cannot meet the lowest prices on earth like many of you is requesting. But finding some kind of …let’s say compromise between the capacity building and prices is our target. When looking at your comments, some have an approach that we try to “tease” you by having “unaffordable pricing”. Of course our goal is to find a deal that you can voluntarily buy our service and feel that you get good value for your money. And at the same time, get a decent payback to our investment of course. Thanks to your valuable feedback and your buying habits, we have naturally learned a lot on how to do this but final offering is something we’d like to create in collaboration with you. We will publish our new offering in social media probably next week and after having your comments, we will process the tariffs to be approved by NTA. Including same charge for data SIMs and normal SIMs as is logical. Hope we can build a successful internet case, Here for Nepal.

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About 3G and more coverage

Namaste! Internet service is raising lot of comments, and no wonder: having a decent access to the internet is nowadays as bread and butter. Or daal baht when speaking in Nepal. We are constantly upgrading the network in more populated areas and to give you the fastest internet service in the country for as many as possible. Many of you have also expressed your concern about pricing, and there is not a simple answer on “When are you going to have affordable service” etc. We do a lot of work at TeliaSonera level to benchmark success cases and we also run businesses in many developing countries; the goal is to bring a good internet experience to as many as it is viable. To all in Nepal, it will take years or maybe never when talking about remote villages. The cost of one base station is from 30.000 US dollars onwards which means a lot of users to pay back the initial investment. We also need to build the fiber optical back bone in order to secure the capacity in the network in the long run Plus international connections by global network operators to run your connection to FB or YouTube. And you need to have 3G enabled devices, either data card of 3G handset. Looking at all this, the internet penetration will certainly take 2-3 years to go over 50% as the mobile voice already is.

We are also dependant on regulative issues: today’s situation is that 3G prices are a mystery because there is no price for 3G in government level. It is impossible for us to know the business case (and Your prices) for 3G until we know the price that we have to pay to the government of Nepal in the form of license and frequency fees. Furthermore, import licence of radio equipment has been pending at the ministry of communication for more than three months. Over 200 new base stations cannot be put on air due to unnecessary delay.

Anyway, we try to give you new reasons to select Ncell. Hope you enjoy the latest campaign for Ncell Connect: when you buy a package of 10 GB worth Rs. 2999(exclusive of taxes), you get the 3.6 MB data card  worth Rs. 1999 (exclusive of taxes) for free. The campaign will start from today April 16, 2012. Enjoy surfing the fastest internet in Nepal! Many of you also ask about new coverage and for you and others, we have opened up a new service to look existing and planned coverage. When speaking about planned, you can expect the coverage to be in place within 3-12 months, bearing the before mentioned challenges in mind. Please find the link below.

"Naya Barsako Subha kamana!"

http://www.ncell.com.np/connect/connect-coverage

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Number Game

Painting eggs for the Easter is old tradition in my country: purple is my favourite

The title is picked up from some Facebook comment, where one of our “fans” is pointing at the growing number of Ncell customers and obviously trying to say that we are playing with the numbers. The logic in this game is easy even though it might look confusing; it looks sometimes confusing to me too.

Mobile industry is international with international standards and in the data base, there are two kinds of registers: the home location register (HLR) is a central database that contains details of each mobile phone subscriber that is authorized to use the Ncell core network. Meaning that this customer can call or send message if there is balance at his/her account. This is the figure that we release. The visitor location register (VLR) is a database of the customers who have roamed in the network. Meaning, that their SIM card had been connected to some of Ncell base stations, somewhere in Nepal.

According international standards, NTA and mobile operators in Nepal release the number of HLR customers in public for several reasons: firstly as said, that’s how the piano plays. HLR is also reliable comparing apple to apple because VLR can vary for several reasons. And naturally, it looks betterJ. When talking about mobile penetration, also NTA is releasing HLR figures, which is not the entire truth; but it is the best available, comparable figure. To be able to know the exact penetration, one needs to know the amount of customers having several subscriptions and it becomes too difficult.

VLR data depends on many issues. In Nepal like in any prepaid market, people tend to carry several SIM cards. And when using those, they do not always use the same SIM: they use one to all public, one to family members etc. Yearly, some 250.000 people leave for emigrant assignments abroad and they do not show up in the network even though they are at HLR. Sometimes they come back during the validity time. Many people in the countryside use their connection very seldom and often during certain times to receive calls from their relatives abroad. And so forth.

At Ncell, we clean the HLR in continuous basis. We pay software licenses based on number of users and it does not make any sense to show too big figures. According international standards, we call a customer active if he/she has made a chargeable action during the past rolling month. Somebody has also claimed that we show the number of sold SIMs which is not thru, that number might be 15-16 million.

The amount of active customers is around 80% of the HLR number, but it is sometimes much higher. For instance, when there was the earthquake in India last autumn, the number increased a lot as people had urgent need to be in touch with their loved ones. Internationally, this is a good and healthy figure showing that people rely on our network. Thank you for that!

Happy Easter!

Regards,

Pasi

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