Ncell offers free browsing on Wikipedia

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Ncell, country’s leading mobile service provider, has joined hands with the Wikimedia Foundation and is launching a new product – Wikipedia Zero – under which all Ncell customers will be able to access the world’s largest online encyclopedia, Wikipedia, free of mobile data charges.

Wikipedia Zero is coming into effect from May 7. This means, from May 7, all Ncell customers accessing Ncell internet will be able to browse Wikipedia at zero cost. There is no service fee attached to the product and no product activation is required as well.

“Wikipedia Zero is one of our initiatives to provide great value to our customers. It will pave the way for present and future subscribers of Ncell to try our data service for free and also deliver a huge knowledge base in their hands,” said Erim Taylanlar, chief executive officer of Ncell.

Wikipedia is the world’s largest online encyclopedia, visited by 500 million people each month, according to Comscore. Wikipedia contains more than 30 million articles in 287 languages, contributed by a global community of 80,000 volunteers. The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia and supports the local communities.

Ncell believes free access to knowledge will contribute to the Nepalese society greatly, helping to close the knowledge gap and excel, stated Sanju Koirala, corporate communication director of Ncell. It is also expected to enrich Wikipedia by supporting growth in number of articles in the Nepali version.

Due to technical constraint, the facility of free browsing, however, will not available on Opera Mini, Blackberry and other handsets using native proxy browsers. Accessing Wikipedia through these browsers will be charged at prevailing rates.

Likewise, visiting external links present in Wikipedia is out of scope of this offer and will be charged as per the existing data plan. The mobile customers, whenever they click on an external link, will be shown a notification indicating that standard data charges will apply to view the link. External link will be opened on subscibers’ consent only.