Mobile subscriber base touches 14.75m

KATHMANDU,JAN 7: 

The telecom service providers added 2.14 million new subscribers ina month from mid-October to mid-November, according to telecom regulator Nepal Telecommunications Authority.

The total telecom subscriber base of the country stood at 14.75 million until mid-November, making the overall teledensity to 55.41 per cent, telecom connections per 100 people, the latest Management Information System report of the regulator revealed.

However, there was marginal increase in the internet subscriber base to 3.75 million until mid-November from 3.59 million a month ago.

Nepal Telecom added 0.13 million subscribers, taking its user base to 7.18 million,whereas another giant GSM mobile service provider Ncell added 0.35 million new users to make its total customer base to over 6.68 million.

However, subscriber base of other four telecom service providers – UTL, STM, Smart and Nepal Satellite – could not increase significantly.

Subscribers of UTL reached 588,307 from 585,170, the report said, adding that subscribers of Nepal Satellite and Smart reached 98,985 and 193,064 from 97,280 and 179,136, respectively in a month.

However, measuring teledensity according to subscriber base cannot provide the data of active mobile subscribers, according to the telecom experts.

“Visitor Location Register (VLR) data is a method to see the real users of telecom service,” director at the Nepal Telecommunications Authority Ananda Raj Khanal said. “In fact, the report has been publishing according to the SIM card distribution,” he said, adding that the SIM card distribution cannot give the figure of real users.

“The current 55.41 per cent overall teledensity is subscription based teledensity rather than users based,” he added.

Visitor Location Register

A Visitor Location Register (VLR) is a database that contains information about the subscribers roaming within a mobile switching centre’s (MSC) location area. It provides details on active customers at any given point of time, excluding ‘switched-off’ and ‘out-of-coverage area’ customers. A Visitor Location Register (VLR) monitors the subscriber’s location within the VLR’s jurisdiction, determine whether a subscriber may access a particular service, allocate roaming numbers during incoming calls and delete the records of inactive subscribers among others.

Source: THT