On Monday, all the services of Nepal Telecommunication Company Limited (Nepal Telecom) were disrupted for 15 minutes due to problems arising in the Telecom’s network. The services were disrupted for 15 minutes from 4:30 PM in the evening.

The Telecom’s technical team promptly resolved the problem. Following that, senior officials of Nepal Telecom sent information to the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology that the disruption was caused by a high traffic of users accessing the network at the same time.

However, the information was inaccurate. According to sources, there must be a significant event in the country for accessing the internet by many users at once.

On Monday, there was no significant event in the country. An employee of Telecom said, “The internet users will increase during political developments or the result of SEE. Since, there was no such event on Monday. There was no protest or closure by any political party. There was no need for the number of users to increase suddenly.”

What occurred on that day?

Problems have arisen several times in the past in Telecom due to its outdated billing system. On Monday, too, there was a problem with the billing system of Telecom.

After the problem arose, the high officials of Telecom prepared a strategy to prevent its disclosure to the public. An investigation is being conducted by the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) regarding the corruption related to the use of the old billing system.

The CIAA has already summoned three dozen employees of the Telecom for the statement regarding the continuation of the old billing system. Therefore, the high officials of the Telecom adopted the strategy to publicize that the network was disrupted due to a high number of users accessing the network at the same time, sources said.

Nepal Telecom has continued the Annual Maintenance Contract (AMC) billing system for one year, disregarding the instructions of the CIAA. The billing system of a Chinese Company Asia Info has been running for over 10 years.

There is a problem in Telecom’s billing due to the unchanged ‘outdated billing system’ which has also caused a loss of billion rupees in income annually.

About 10 percent leakage is occurring in the billing system of the Telecom’s income worth Rs 35 billion which has caused a loss of Rs 3 billion. Implementing a new system could reduce this leakage to one or two percent.

Unnecessary hassle in purchasing new billing software

After a leakage occurred in the billing system purchased from Asia info, the CIAA instructed for the purchase of a new billing software. A tender for the billing system was issued under pressure from the CIAA, but at a three-year-old price of the US dollar.

The reason for initiating this dispute is to prevent the new system from being implemented. It will take two to three years to fully operationalize the new system after it is purchased.

Files have to be approved at several places, before releasing the tender notice of any public institution. Similarly, the files are approved by the lower level officials and gradually move upward and are finally approved by the executive head even in general tender. There is a provision for approving a tender worth billions of rupees also by the board of directors.

Telecom had issued the contract at the old dollar price with the aim of continuing using the billing system of Asia Info. Additionally, the dispute has halted the procurement process of the new billing system for the time being.