Free Wikipedia by Ncell, Telecom operators of Nepal Ncell offers free wikipedia to its customers

If you’re a Ncell user, enthusiast of any type of knowledge and tired of spending for it, your operator now understands your problem and will help to serve you to some extent with Free Wikipedia access. One of the main telecom operators of Nepal, Ncell has now a mind-blowing offer for its customers. Having about 48% market share in the telecom industry of Nepal, the company has offered free unlimited browsing of the World’s largest online library Wikipedia through service called Wikipedia Zero in co-ordination with the Wikimedia Foundation (the non-profit organisation which is currently running the website). The offer is effective since 7th of May.

As we know wikipedia is the world’s largest online encyclopaedia, It got nearly 500 million visits per month. Wikipedia contains more than 30 million articles in 287 languages, which are 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. Addressing a media meet in the capital, Erim Taylanlar, chief executive officer of Ncell, said that information was the key to further development of any country at the present time, and that the new service would not only help obtain free information but also help enrich Nepali literature in the global arena through Wikipedia Zero.

The offer is valid for all types of Ncell users completely free of cost- they just need to have a cellphone with a web browsing service. The customers can visit any pages of the website, but seeing or visiting external links will be chargeable as per the data plan of the company. The company has also stated that the offer will not be valid in BlackBerry OS, and even in Opera mini and similar other browsers which use proxy, for example- Nokia Express. To be clear, you’ll need to open the Wikipedia.com website from your mobile’s main browser (can be Chrome/Firefox Browser for Android, or IE for Windows Phone), which don’t use the proxy service,and turn off all the apps/sync/update, so that they aren’t allowed to use any data in the background. The unsupported free access to the proxy-using browsers is however, due to technical constraints, according to Ncell.

For the free browsing of wikipedia you can simply type m.wikipedia.org on your browser which will show small banner “Free Wikipedia access by Ncell” on top as shown on above image. And for the direct main domain access (simply www.wikipedia.org) and the access from desktop, laptop via tethering we have some doubt wether it will be free or not? However, ncell conformed us that it will be free either even though it mayn’t  show”Free Wikipedia access by Ncell” banner on top.

Image from ncell.com.np

This certainly is a good offer for the Ncell users all over the country, but you’ll need to be a bit aware, since your main balance may flee anytime from your phone due to the background data used by your mobile while browsing Wikipedia. In case of external links, 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 subscribers’ consent only.