Unified Telecom Licence: Govt set to issue permit to small operators

KATHMANDU, MAR 14 -

The government has intensified its work to issue unified telecom licence to small telecom companies, with sources at the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) claiming that the regulator is set to issued the unified licence to UTL and Smart Telecom within two weeks.

Telecom companies have been mounting pressure on the government to issue them the licence before the change of guard in the government, according to sources at the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC). They said the Prime Minister’s Office is also keen on issuing unified licence to these companies.

United Telecom Limited, Smart Telecom and STM Telecom Sanchar have applied for the unified licence which allows them to operate multiple services—local, domestic trunk, international long distance and cellular mobile telephone.

“The NTA should have a standard guideline to issue the unified licence. But it is preparing to issue the permission without devising one,” said a ministry source.

The NTA has already sought a service roll-out plan from the telecom companies applying for the unified licence. The telecom regulatory body has completed 50 percent site monitoring to verify eligibility of Smart Telecom. “We will also form a team to assess the criteria of UTL soon,” said Kumar Sharma, director at the NTA. He said that they were busy in evaluating the criteria and drafting of the licence to be issued among the prospective applicants.

The government is moving ahead even as a case await a final verdict from the Supreme Court on whether to adopt the unified licence provision. Responding to the writ petitions filed against the unified telecom licence, the apex court had last month listed the case ‘a serious one’ and decided to pass a final verdict after receiving a written clarification from the defendants.

And just as the NTA was about to re-start the work on the unified licence, advocate Narayan Prasad Devkota filed a petition asking the court to issue a stay order. However, the court denied the stay stating that it would pass a final verdict as ordered earlier.

However, the NTA said it will move ahead since the court has not issued a stay order against the unified licence provision. Kailash Prasad Neupane, spokesperson for the NTA, said that without a court’s stay order they were not legally bound to stop work on providing licence to operators meeting the criteria. “We are preparing to issue licence as per the provision introduced by the government,” he added. The unified licence system was introduced 10 months ago, targeting small operators to provide them a level-playing field.

According to NTA officials, normally service operation licence has to be issued within 90 days after the application of aspiring company. UTL and Smart Telecom had applied for the unified licence in September and November 2012 respectively. STM Telecom applied for the permission last month saying that it completed service expansion to the government designated areas.

On Wednesday, a delegation of five workers’ unions of Nepal Telecom also visited the NTA and demanded the licence not be issued, arguing that the provision introduced against the law would only bring along unhealthy competition into the market. A member of an NT trade union said that NTA officials were speeding up work due to increased pressure from “higher level”.

The government eligibility conditions for unified licence requires two rural telecom companies—Smart Telecom and STM Telecom to install at least one exchange or base transceiver station in each village development committee where they are designated to take service as per the existing licence condition. As for UTL, since the operator was provided licence to take basic telecom service across nation, there was no any condition, as per the NTA.

The government had provided rural telecom service licence to STM Telecom and Smart Telecom nine and four years ago respectively. As per their licence condition, Smart Telecom is supposed to take two line telecom services to 398 un-served VDCs of four development regions-central, western, mid-western and far-western. And, STM Telecom had received to provide telecom service in 534 VDCs in the Eastern Development Region

Source: The Kathmandu Post