Kathmandu, Aug 20: In a bid to provide more options to mobile phone users, Nepal has decided to introduce pre-paid mobile phones starting from Saturday. The pre-paid phones will be introduced in five cities including the capital, Nepal Telecommunications Corporation (NTC) said. To use pre-paid mobile, customers have to pay Rs 1,700 in the beginning and in turn get Rs 500 worth recharge cards.
The NTC is introducing Rs 500 and Rs 1000 pre-paid recharge cards for the purpose. The Rs 500 card will provide service for a total of 84.47 minutes which has to be utilised within 60 days.
The tariff for pre-paid mobile will be a little higher than that of the post-paid mobile but it does away with the need to deposit any minimum charges as in the case of post-paid mobile.

NTC has the capacity to distribute 40,000 sets of pre-paid mobile sets. At present, mobile services are operated in 23 district and 48,028 post-paid sets have been distributed in Kathmandu Valley.
Presently, incoming calls on mobiles are also charges by NTC but plans are to make them free in the near future, NTC sources said. Bureau Report