NTA fails to bring firms under scanner

KATHMANDU, MAY 22: 

Though Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) has vowed to strengthen consumer-interest protection in its Ten Year Master Plan for 2011-2020 and yearly policy and programme, no tangible progress has been made by the NTA so far.

The regulator has revealed that the country’s consumer base has touched 16.63 million until mid-March taking the overall teledensity rate to 60.34, a source at the authority said. “Still, the authority has done nothing accountable to protect consumers’ rights.”

The authority has been a mute spectator even if its survey had revealed that the Quality of Service was not good of telecom operators, he said. Similarly, operators lack proper monitoring mechanism in the billing system for the services they introduce which has created much doubts regarding billing frauds, he claimed. 

Currently, the regulator inspects billing system of service providers manually, he said. “The manual monitoring of billing system using rudimentary and traditional method is not reliable at all.” 

It is hardly possible to monitor the billing system manually since even a single millisecond is important while billing, he claimed. Every consumer has complaints against operators regarding their services and unexpected tariff, he said. “But, NTA has failed to disseminate clear message to consumers regarding complaint mechanism.”

The regulator has also failed to formulate separate consumer protection regulation though it had mentioned in its yearly programme to bring the regulation by mid-July. 

NTA will strengthen its consumer-interest protection division so that it is made more effective, universal and fair to all consumers ensuring that consumers are well informed about their rights.

Source: THT