Newly appointed NTA head Digambar Jha hinted of giving away one more GSM license. Till now there are only two operators (NT and Ncell) to run GSM service in the whole of Nepal whereas two other telcos Smart Tel and Nepal Satellite are running limited mobility GSM service. Talking to Nagariknews, Jha opines that bringing new GSM telco promotes competition and will be fruitful in bringing a quality network to the public.
It’s not clear whether NTA will be giving new GSM license through Unified license or separate GSM license. Earlier, NTA had called for Unified license through which operators can use all services through single license in return for a fee of NPR 357.50 million (USD4.09 million) and a renewal fee of NPR 20.13 billion for ten years. 4 out of 6 have applied for the new unified service license. Smart Tel and CDMA operator UTL (United Telecom) may be getting the new GSM license who have applied for Unified license, other two being Nepal Telecom and Ncell.
<pstyle=”text-align: justify;”>Jha even accused previous NTA heads of being biased to operators in making any decision which only facilitated noncompetitive environment. According to him, former Nepal Telecom heads in NTA could not treat all the operators in the same way and hence no significant grow in Nepalese telecom market. He also made a challenge to bring Nepal in the top 100 country for IT development within a year. Now Nepal is in the 137th position in the world out of 155 countries for IT development.
Lets see and wait when will the new operator be here. As for customers, more operators means more competition which will lead to affordability and quality of service. But there are much more to think including the outcome of any investment in the country.
