Wednesday, December 28, 2016

Nepal Telecom to start 4G services from January 1

The Nepal Telecom has announced that it is starting the fourth generation (4G) dervices to its customers from January 1. "The consumers will be able to use 4G telecommunication service for the first time from 2017 as Nepal Telecom, the state-owned telecom service provider, is starting the new service in two major cities from January 1," it claimed.
The telecom companies till now provide only 2G and 3G services. In July this year, the government had opened the doors for telecom companies to operate 4G service by amending the Radio Frequency Policy.
The two telecom service providers – Nepal Telecom and Ncell – had applied for the operation of the 4G services. But Nepal Telecom is the first company to receive permission from the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA), the regulatory body, to start the new service.
“We are starting 4G service in Kathmandu and Pokhara from January 1, 2017” said the NT officials. "We will expand the service in other areas of the country gradually."
The 4G service is expected to help customers to operate the various services requiring high bandwidth such as video in an easier way.
Lately beside NT, three other telecom operators – Ncell, United Telecom Limited (UTL) and Smart Telecom, all privately owned, have also applied to NTA for approval to operate 4G service.
However, the NTA said that they were studying the roll out plans of the private sector telecom operators. There are currently six telecom operators in Nepal. But the Ncell claimed that they were ready to offer the 4G service to their customer, immediately after they receive the permission.
Despite the 113 per cent teledensity in the contry, according to the MIS report of the NTA, the telecoms sector has very nominal contribution to the economy. According to the various studies, increase in 10 per cent of teledensity will contribute one per cent to the gross domestic production (GDP). However, it has not been the case in Nepal.  

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