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Posted
on 04-Dec-02 09:49 PM
NTC raids illegal phone service providers
By Vijay Babu Khatri
KATHMANDU, Dec 3
Nepal Telecommunications Corporation (NTC) today raided several locations in the Lalitpur area and arrested at least four people who have been providing international calls to the public bypassing the international gateway exchange of the NTC, the only licensed operator for national and international telephone service.
The raids were carried out at Kumaripati of Jawalakhel area against Global Communications, Cyber Link and Communication Centre. Among the arrested and detained include Kali Bahadur Shakya, Shanta Ratna Shakya, Kabir Shakya and Ram Bahadur Maharjan.
Another accused, Karma Maharjan of Kumaripati fled from right in front of the authorities. Lalitpur District Administration Office has detained the other four arrested for further investigations.
This is the first time that the Revenue Monitoring and Supervision Committee (RMSC) of the NTC carried out such raids charging the accused of duping the NTC of revenue amounting to millions of rupees. All accused were providing international calls to the local customers through illegal channels.
The charged were involved in directly dealing with foreign operators collecting 10-15 per cent of the international telecom tariff which requires 50 per cent of the tariff to be paid to the NTC. The NTC has signed agreements with 131 foreign operators.
Even international telecom operators prefer to use the illegal channels to make savings on the tariff that they have to pay authorised telecom operators of any country, which is the NTC in the case of Nepal.
Bypassing of long distance international calls from the gateway of the NTC has been a major cause of headache to the state-owned telecom operator. International calls have been the only profit making business for the NTC. Such illegal operations by various individuals have been causing losses in millions of rupees to the NTC.
All accused were providing telecom links to the United States, Australia and the European countries, among others. They made use of satellites to link up international calls bypassing the NTC’s gateway.
Such illegal use of satellites began almost a year ago. Telephone calls made through the NTC gateway can be easily traced and the tariff involved collected.
According to an RMSC member, the accused were providing the illegal facilities through dozens of local telephone lines. Among those telephone numbers some are owned by Internet service providers.
Estimates put the total number of local lines being misused at 1000. The NTC is incurring a loss of up to Rs 140 million each month due to such misuse, incurring a loss of Rs 1.68 billion in the last one year.
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