Nepal Telecom (NT), the largest telecom company in Nepal, announced it is planning to establish an optical fibre connection with China by the end of the fiscal year.
It was also announced by Shankar Pokharel, Nepal’s Minister for Information and…
Nepal Telecom (NT), the largest telecom company in Nepal, announced it is planning to establish an optical fibre connection with China by the end of the fiscal year.
It was also announced by Shankar Pokharel, Nepal’s Minister for Information and Communications, that the country will deploy WiMAX, when the budget for the upcoming year is approved.
Pokharel said the government will review the radio spectrum holdings of the three existing mobile networks with an eye to considering a fourth mobile license.
“Though the government has licensed some private companies for rural areas, their services are worse than that of Nepal Telecom,” he said. He claimed demands for NT´s basic communication services were decreasing due to aggressive expansion of CDMA and GSM lines by the state-owned telecom operator.
The announcement follows a consultancy exercise between the government and Gate-In.
NT, also the largest mobile operator in the country has 3.5m mobile subscribers, while its nearest rival, Spice Nepal has only 2m. The government wants to encourage new entrants into the Nepali mobile sector, so that consumers can benefit from more competitive pricing.
The state-owned telecom company is investing heavily in the upgrade of Nepal’s communications infrastructure. It has held discussions with China Telecom over establishing an optical fibre connection between the two operators.
NT currently has optical fibre connection with India and it sends and receives data towards Hong Kong, Korea, Japan and other countries through India.
Anoopranjan Bhattarai, deputy managing director-planning division at NT said: “If optical fibre connection with China is established, the cost of telecommunication services to and from other countries will significantly drop.”
