+977NP
Nepal number screening
A UTC+5:45 time zone and a huge migrant workforce mean scheduling goes wrong more often than screening does. Facebook has the widest reach.
Mobile number format
Nepali mobiles are 10 digits with no leading zero, opening with 97 or 98 — 9841234567, for example — and the international form is simply +977 plus those 10 digits. Only landlines take 0 and an area code, Kathmandu being 01.
Main carriers
- Nepal Telecom (NTC)
- Ncell
- Smart Telecom
980, 981 and 982 are generally Ncell; 984, 985 and 986 belong to state-owned Nepal Telecom; 961, 962 and 988 are Smart Telecom. NTC is often the only carrier with coverage in the hills, so the ranges quietly encode geography and spending power.
On the ground
Nepal runs on UTC+5:45 — one of the world's few 45-minute offsets — so any schedule computed on whole hours will land off-target. The migrant workforce is large: a meaningful share of numbers belong to people currently in the Gulf or Malaysia, still using their Nepali line but keeping the working hours of wherever they are. Wallets like eSewa and Khalti use the phone number as the account ID.
Screening guidance
Clean on the 97/98 opening and the 10-digit length first — Nepali lists carry an unusually high share of landlines and stray Indian numbers. Then screen Facebook, which has the best hit rate locally. WhatsApp is concentrated among people with overseas work history, so it doubles as a way to identify the remittance-linked segment.
Key platforms in Nepal
Nepal's primary messenger is Viber — genuinely unusual worldwide — but it sits outside our coverage. Among the platforms that can be screened, Facebook and Messenger reach furthest and function as the default place for local news and commerce. TikTok was blocked nationwide in November 2023 and unblocked in August 2024, so historical activity data has to account for that gap.
FAQ
How many digits is a Nepali mobile number?
Ten digits, no leading zero, opening with 97 or 98 — 9841234567, for instance — and internationally that becomes +977 plus the same 10 digits. Only landlines use 0 with an area code (01 for Kathmandu). Rows starting with 0, or running to only 9 digits, are formatting errors: repair them before screening rather than discarding them as dead numbers.
What is the difference between 984 and 980 in Nepal?
984, 985 and 986 belong to state-owned Nepal Telecom; 980, 981 and 982 are Ncell; 961, 962 and 988 are Smart Telecom. NTC has better coverage in the hills and remote districts while Ncell's base is more urban, so the two groups carry an implicit difference in geography and spending power that is useful for a first-pass segmentation.
What send times work for Nepal?
Nepal sits at UTC+5:45, two hours and fifteen minutes behind Beijing — one of the rare 45-minute offsets, so converting on whole hours guarantees a mistimed send. On top of that, a sizeable share of holders are working in the Gulf or Malaysia: the Nepali line is still active but the person's day follows their host country. Splitting the list by segment beats a single global send window.
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