Nepal's mobile operators will need to implement 10-second billing from next week and per-second billing from October under a new regulatory directive.
The Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) has instructed operators to reduce billing durations for domestic calls from the current 20 seconds to 10 seconds from April 14.
The reduction to per-second billing will subsequently need to be implemented from October 18 to coincide with the Nepali new year, the Himalayan Times reported.
The minimum billing unit for landline calls has meanwhile been fixed at 60 seconds. International calls will be reduced to 30 second billing from the April date and to 10 seconds from October.
According to the report, the NTA implemented the reductions following consultations with the industry, but the regulator still plans to conduct checks to make sure the nation's six operators follow the directive.
The directive will need to be implemented by Nepal Telecom, Ncell, UTL, Smart Telecom, Nepal Satellite Telecom and STM Telecom.