Outdated billing system causing massive loss to Nepal Telecom

Nepal Telecom has been incurring a daily loss of around Rs 9m because of its outdated billing processing system. The convergent real time billing system that is currently in use doesn’t account for 10 percent of the total daily call bills, which is around Rs 90m. An official says despite the heavy revenue loss, the telecom management is not in favor of discontinuing the faulty system.

In fact, some senior officials in the management are bent on upgrading the existing billing system instead of getting a new one.

“With the cost of upgrading the CRTB, the telecom could easily buy the latest system,” says the official. The current billing system was bought from AsianInfo, a China-based telecommunications service provider, and runs on software developed by Oracle. A highly placed source at telecom says that Nepal-based agents for these two companies, Araniko and World Distribution Nepal, have colluded with the senior management officials of the telecom company to continue the existing billing system. It is said Sunil Poudel, the managing director of telecom, and some senior political leaders are also involved in the scheme, so that AsianInfo can continue to provide hardware support. The source tells ApEx that the telecom is planning to allocate Rs 3bn to upgrade its existing billing system. “If you get the latest billing system from the world’s leading company, it should cost not more than Rs 3.5bn,” says the source. “AsianInfo is not even on the list of top telecommunication solution provider companies, so why is this company getting an undue favor?” Although a board meeting of the telecom in July last year had decided to invite a tender for procurement of a billing system, the management has refused to implement the decision. “The current system could crash anytime, but Poudel and other senior officials are not ready to introduce a new billing system,” says the source. “Nepal Telecom is losing billions in revenue due to the vested interest of a few senior officials, politicians and businesspersons.” For now plans to upgrade the existing billing system have been halted at the directive of the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority. The anti-graft body has already conducted its preliminary investigation into potential irregularities that might have taken place when the telecom decided to upgrade the existing billing system. Based on the investigation, the commission has directed the telecom to cease the process of upgrading its billing system. “The commission has instructed Nepal Telecom to follow due procedure and invite a tender for billing system procurement,” says Shyam Prasad Bhandari, spokesperson at the commission.