Nepal Telecom to propose Rs 62bn plan

KATHMANDU:

Nepal Telecom (NT) is doing final preparation to unveil its budget for next fiscal year with focus on establishing subsidiary companies and expanding high speed data services nationwide. The company is proposing annual budget of Rs 62 billion to its board soon for approval.

Opening of subsidiary companies involving resources from the private sector is based on NT’s old idea of investment diversification. Anoop Ranjan Bhattarai, managing director of NT, said that they have plans to establish subsidiary companies for software and application development, managed service and infrastructure sharing.

“Establishment of infrastructure sharing and managed service companies are also being proposed in our budget for next fiscal year,” said Bhattarai. As per him, other telecom companies and telecommunications equipment vendors like Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corporation will also be able to invest in the proposed managed service company, if the board gives a go ahead.

Normally, a managed service company works for installation, maintenance and operation of telecom services. Other plans of NT for next

fiscal include expanding optical fibre network, making data services like fibre to the home (FTTH) easily available to customers, enhancing the quality of voice service, and adopting a new marketing strategy to hire a foreign consultant.

Bhattarai said that with demand for data service growing they will be giving priority on taking broadband internet to rural parts of the country as urban areas have already been availing such data service like 3G. “We will also become the market leader in voice segment by next fiscal year,” he added. In terms of types of data services and customer base, NT is the leading company in the local market. However, in voice segment, Ncell is far ahead of Nepal Telecom.

By the end of the first 10 months of the current fiscal year, the customer base on NT touched 10.5 million including 8.69 million who use GSM mobile service for voice service. It has over four million data users and provides multiple data services including EVDO, 3G, WiMax, ADSL and dial up. Currently, NT is focusing on 3G service expansion and FTTH.

Meanwhile, NT is preparing to unveil data packages for GSM mobile service users. NT officials said that preparation is underway to send packages for approval to Nepal Telecommunications Authority. However, compared to EVDO data service, GSM internet packages will be costly. NT’s 3G coverage has reached over 50 districts. Similarly, even though it failed to attract customers as anticipated, WiMax data service has been extended to 72 districts out of 75 districts.

Source: THT