Nepali government-owned telco to introduce social network site

Nepal's government-owned telecommunication service provider is all set to introduce a new social network site within the first week of March, officials said. Nepal Telecom (NT) has been currently testing the new social network internally at a time when the social networks like Facebook and Twitter are making revolution worldwide. "The social site will have all facilities as in Facebook while it will also have Skype, group message and Viber facility among others," Anoop Ranjan, managing director at NT told Xinhua on Wednesday, adding the preparations towards launching the social network is at the final stage. The NT is however yet to name its social site. Even though the social network was previously named "Chautari," the NT decided to find some other name which can help promote its brand. "The social network will have more facilities than the Facebook and it will be very appropriate for Nepalis," Guna Keshari Pradhan, spokesperson at the NT told Xinhua by phone. The NT said it attempted to create its own social network site so as to contain the tens of thousands of dollars flowing out from Nepal for the use of Facebook, Twitter and Skype, among others. NT officials said even though the social network will be a sort of replica, it will try to offer local contents and more facilities. With the introduction of the new social network, the Nepali users can use it for number of purposes including making friends, chatting, making group messages, making internet protocol (IP) calls, uploading and sharing photos and videos, writing status and making comments, among others. According to the NT sources, the new social network aims at benefiting 1 million users which will be later increased to 10 million people. The NT has invested around 900 million Nepalese currency (9 million US dollars) so far to prepare the social network.