Fixed telephony base shrinks

The number of fixed telephony users in the country fell to 836,361 in mid-October from 836,825 in mid-September, according to latest data.

Of the total, 635,609 were PSTN users and 198,752 were WLL users, said Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) that revealed Nepal Telecom grew its PSTN base to 631,810 from 629,906 a month earlier, while STM Telecom Sanchar's base crept up to 5,201 from 5,199 customers. Smart had 598 PSTN public phone centres, similar to a month earlier.

Nepal Telecom also ended the period with 124,335 WLL users, down from 126,740 a month earlier, while UTL's WLL base grew to 71,467 from 71,432. Nepal Satellite Telecom's WLL base was stable at 2,950 subscribers.

Meanwhile, the number of limited mobility subscribers still stood at 1.15 million in October, similar to September, the data revealed.

UTL served 589,184 limited mobility subscribers, up from 582,205, STM had 155 customers, Nepal Satellite had 146,758 subscribers, same as a month earlier, and Smart had 418,847 subscribers, also the same as in September According to the authority, there were also 1,742 Global Mobile Personal Communications (GMPCS) users in the country.