NT plans increasing subscribers to 13m

Nepal Telecom (NT), the state-owned telecom giant has targeted to increase its subscriber base to 13 million within the next three years by adding at least 5 million new subscribers in its telecom service network.

Amarnath Singh, Managing Director of the NT said that they would increase the number of the customers in PSTN landline, GSM and CDMA to this effect significantly. “This will help us to occupy 60 percent of the market amid competition with the private telecom service provider,” said Singh, while addressing a press meet organized to announce the NT service availability in all 3,915 village development committees of the nation.

The state telecom service operator on Tuesday reached in Bajura’ Sapata VDC, the last VDC to avail telecom service with the telecom service based of VAST technology. It had speeded up its service extension massively to reach 199 remote VDCs following the government’s order to take telecom service within six month.

“We will installed 150 VSATs in next fiscal year to provide service in core villages of the VDCs,” said Singh. “We are coming up with seven various projects in next fiscal year allocating Rs. 48.7 billion.”  

During the next fiscal year, NT plans to add 1.8 million subscribers in GSM mobile segment, 0.6 million in the CDMA based service. Expansion of fixed line in the rural areas based on next generation network (NGN) technology, landline and 3G service expansion, installation of 500 antennas in public locations and ADSL service in all 75 districts are some of the plans of the NT for next fiscal year.

According to Surendra Prasad Thike, spokesperson of the NT, there are 0.25 internet service subscribers including 41,000 of the ADSL service. “We have already completed installing necessary equipment for the ADSL in 69 districts,” said Thike.    

He also said that the subscriber of the NT would increase to 5.4 million by the end of the current fiscal year. There are a total of 7.99 million telecom service subscriber in the nation with the tele-density reaching 28 percent.