United Telecom to take its unified licence

KATHMANDU:

United Telecom Ltd (UTL) is all set to collect its unified licence and become a new mobile service operator. The company paid licence fee and first instalment of renewal charge on Wednesday, two days before the deadline to take the permit ends.

The Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) said that UTL applied to take its licence by paying Rs 252 million licence fee and Rs 50 million as first instalment of licence renewal fee. A board meeting of NTA slated for Friday is likely to decide regarding issuing the permit, along with required frequency to operate GSM mobile service.

UTL had entered telecom market in 2004 and so far, the company has been providing telecom service based on CDMA technology. It will be the fourth company after Nepal Telecom, Ncell and Smart Telecom to have the permit to operate GSM mobile, a popular service segment.

“Even as our board had decided to issue the licence to UTL two years ago, a fresh decision will include issues related to frequency assignment,” said Achyuta Nanda Mishra, assistant spokesperson for NTA.

After failing to take licence within the government directed time (in March), UTL had approached NTA asking for two months’ time (60 days) which is expiring on Friday.

Unified licence allows companies obtaining it to operate multiple telecom services, including GSM mobile service. Immediately, after the government’s decision in April 2013 to issue the licence to UTL and Smart Telecom, UTL had also made up front payment of Rs 102 million as licence fee.

For the unified licence, the government has fixed licence fee of Rs 357 million and licence renewal fee in instalments over a 10-year period totalling Rs 20.13 billion.

Smart Telecom had obtained the licence immediately after the decision. However, it has not been able to expand its services as expected because of internal share ownership dispute and investment issues.

Source: THT