Free Email to SMS service in Ncell : Receive SMS for free!

Just wanted to give you guys a quick heads-up, Ncell, the leading mobile operator in Nepal seems to have enabled the Email to SMS service for free. It used to cost about Rs. 30 per month earlier to activate this service. But, now it's completely free and you don't need to do anything to activate the service, it's already activated on all Ncell mobile numbers.

The free offering of this service has not yet been announced officially by Ncell, and we do not have any idea whether it would last long or not. Also, we are not sure about the limitation on the number of SMS you can receive.

What is Email to SMS service and How can I use it?

As the name says, Email to SMS is a simple service that forwards emails sent to a particular email address to your mobile  phone. Each mobile number has a unique Email ID. Let's suppose your Ncell number is 9801234567. Now, your unique email address would be 9779801234567@sms.ncell.com.np. Every time a new mail is sent to that email address, it would get redirected to your mobile number ( i.e. 9801234567) as an SMS.

Don't believe it? Give it a try by creating a new email through Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail or any other mail provider that you use and send that email to 977YourNcellNumber@sms.ncell.com.np, you will receive the email on your mobile as an SMS. (Replace YourNcellNumber with your own Ncell phone number.)

Lastly, there's endless possibilities as to what you can do with it. You can use it in anyplace where you need to put your email address, and instead of getting an email, you'll receive an SMS in your mobile phone, that too for free! We have already covered about how to receive SMS for Facebook notifications for free. Next, you can make use of this to send free SMS to your friends/relatives as well, just send an email to their unique email address. You can also use this service to receive SMS for new alerts on Twitter. That's just some of the few things that you can do with it. Explore others on your own.

This particular service is available free of charge on most of the countries worldwide (on their mobile network, off course). NTC used to provide Email to SMS service for free, but that was long time back. Let's hope Ncell's Email to SMS service remains free for as long as possible and that NTC learns something from them.

 SMS to Email service seems to work as well. Now onward, you can send an SMS from your mobile phone and it will get delivered as an Email. For this to work, on your message box, type the email address of the receiver, give a space and then type the message and send it to 9205. The receiver will see your email address as 977YourNcellNumber@sms.ncell.com.np, so that when he/she replies to your email you will receive it on your phone as an SMS. (It costs around Rs.1 to send the SMS)

**Thanks to Mr. Amit Chaudhary for bringing this to my notice.

Update : It's up again. Free for now. Not sure how long it will last.

Update #1 : It's no longer free. Ncell had enabled it for a brief moment only. Now, you need to pay around Rs.33.4 per month to activate this service.