'My first priority will be service expansion and quality improvement'

The appointment of Budhi Prasad Acharya as Managing Director of Nepal Telecom has drawn criticism from the company’s own engineers. They are demanding the government to replace Acharya, who is from the chartered accountancy field, with a new chief who has technical expertise. Amid the troubles at the telecom company, Ramesh Shrestha of The Himalayan Times spoke to Acharya, about the technical employees’ protest, and the company’s future plans and projects.

NT engineers are in protest against your appointment and say that you are inappropriate for the post. What do you have to say about it?

I would not exactly call it a protest as such but rather dissatisfaction of some of our friends who want the MD to be from the technical field. Since everything is changing, we should learn to follow the changing times. I think they should not make it an issue. The appointment is the government’s decision and we have to accept it. Since I am the one who has been appointed to the post, I must follow the decision and will continue to work accordingly. In a way, we all have some dissatisfaction. Despite this, we, being a company employee have to continue to work by remaining within the boundary.

There has been a trend of bringing new projects when a new MD is appointed. Would you please share about your plan?

I do not have any concrete project as of now. We will rather be bringing new services based on market demand and the financial returns that we gain from them. The current demand is for service expansion and quality improvement. Some plans in the pipeline include establishment of a data centre for commercial use, network operation centre, and migration of services to long-term evolution. Better management of technology, human resources, finance and market will be my priority as the MD. There is a need to make human resources more effective, also considering the career growth of employees, motivational programmes, and increasing employee productivity. We have a restructuring plan, which will help make the company more competitive by decentralising power to regional offices.

Since customers complain of services like mobile connection and ADSL being poor, what will you be doing to improve them?

My first priority will be service expansion and quality improvement. Compared to other companies, we have diverse services and we have to concentrate in different areas. This has resulted in problems relating to providing quality service in some places. We are in the process of service expansion, so the quality of service will improve gradually besides the expansion. As per the demand of time, our main target will be to attract customers to different data services because the market has already showed that it will be the main source of revenue generation. Services like 3G, EVDO, ADSL, WiMax technology based wi-fi, and ‘fibre to the home’ will be expanded at a rapid pace to cover all parts of country and make them reliable.

What do you say about charges as customers want them cheap?

We are already providing services at a low rate and this has been possible due to the huge customer base that we have. There will be no price war from our part. We will rather be competing with other companies on service quality.

Since you are a chartered accountant, how do you evaluate the present financial health of NT?

It is good financially with net worth of over Rs 60 billion and minimum book value of Rs 400. Since share price is a bit low, we need to increase profits and rate of dividend to motivate investors. That is why, there has been requirement to expand service, introduce more value added services, and bring package-based services. As convergent real time billing system is almost ready to be implemented, we will soon bring data packages for GSM mobile users. To cut expenses, we have already started outsourcing the job of maintenance work. Our plans also include to outsource other works that require huge work force and this will help reduce human resources and administrative cost.

NT has many projects like 10 million mobile line, IP-CDMA and WiMax to name a few. However, none of them are being implemented effectively. Why is it so?

I agree in projects being delayed to some extent as we have not been able to complete projects in an efficient manner. We will be intensifying the project works for service expansion and complete them as fast as we can. The delays are results of multiple reasons including problems from vendors with whom we work and lack of coordination among us. Regarding the restructuring plan, we have also considered these issues and there will be a provision under which the concerned project manager will have the authority to solve the problems on their own. Besides, we will also hold vendors fully responsible for completing projects on time.

If a vendor is responsible for project delay, why does NT not take action as per agreement ?

It is true that projects also get delayed due to internal problems at NT. But, in a majority of the cases, it is the vendors who delay project implementation and completion. It has been difficult to take action against such vendors as there is a risk of the project being stalled. Moreover, it is hard to hire another vendor for the same project as the technology introduced by the former vendor is not compatible with the technology of other suppliers. Rather, to motivate vendors, we are mulling on a scheme to reward those who complete projects on time.

Source: THT