By A Staff Reporter
Kathmandu, Feb. 7: About 70 per cent of the country's population use some forms of services provided by Nepal Telecom (NT).
The company had a customer base numbering only 422,000 almost 17 years ago, but that has swelled to 20.9 million now, according to Nepal Telecom. Number of subscribers increased dramatically after NT introduced 4G mobile and data service, based on wireless technology, in all 77 districts, along with Fiber to the Home (FTTH) services based on optical fiber in 42 districts, said Dilli Ram Adhikari, its managing director.
Additionally, the company has been providing basic telephones, wireless mobiles, and telephone services based on satellite technology, as well as internet data services in virtually all areas, including remote ones.
NTTV television service, which relies on FTTH network, has started from January 1, 2021. This will allow customers to access services such as Video On Demand (VOD) at all FTTH-available locations.
The FTTH service has attracted a large number of customers, numbering 115,000 as of now.
Adhikari said, “The company's customer base for basic services (PSTN, GSM, CDMA) was around 22.7 million (76.55 tele-density) until mid-July of 2019, when some 2 million inactive customers were removed from the system. The customer base has been gradually increasing and by mid-December of 2020, it has reached 20.9 million (69.85 tele-density).”
Of these, 18.43 million subscribers avail of its GSM mobile service, 1.8 million CDMA service, 617, 000 PSTN service and 71, 300 FTTH voice service.
According to Nepal Telecommunication Authority’s (NTA) Management Information System (MIS) report published last November, the company commands 53.65 per cent share of the voice services across the country.
Similarly, the number of users of the company's data (email, internet, etc.) services under the internet data service has reached more than 16.49 million by the mid-December of 2020. Of these, 15.99 million use GSM mobile data service, 181,500 ADSL service, 68,000 FTTH data service and 18,500 WiMAX service, NT said.
Under the plan to provide advanced telecommunication services across the country, very high-speed wireless technology LTE or Advanced 4G mobile service is being expanded nationwide, Adhikari said.
This service has reached 620 local levels in all 77 districts.
What’s more, NT has expedited the work of laying optical fiber covering the districts, municipalities and rural municipalities of Provinces 1, 2 and Bagmati.
He said that an agreement has also been reached to lay optical fiber along the Mid-Hills Highway in Karnali and Sudurpaschhim Provinces in addition to those provinces.
The company is expanding its FTTH service plan, which will provide phone, internet and television services simultaneously using optical fiber in the current fiscal year. This service has reached 42 districts.
On the occasion of the company’s 17th anniversary, it launched 4G Wireless Home Broadband Service (WBS) and Machine to Machine (M2M) Data and SMS Pack services, along with other attractive features, from Thursday.
4G customers across the country who do not have access to FTTH or wired telephones or Wi-Fi service but use a lot of data via wireless medium will be able to access the Internet at affordable rate using 4G wireless home broadband services employing CPE (Customer Premises Equipment).
We will create an environment to foster digital literacy and reduce digital divide by promoting broadband services to all local bodies, he said.
He added that 5G service would be tested and studied for operation and that a draft would be prepared for its commercial operation soon.