CIAA (Akhtiyar) has cleared the issue to provide a unified license to the telecom operators operating in limited areas. After which, NTA (Nepal Telecommunication Authority) decides to award the Unified License to UTL and Smart cell. With the unified license, they can operate all the telecom services a.k.a Basic telephony license.
The Unified license enables an operator to run all of the telecommunication services, throughout the country. They need to pay a fee of NRs 357.50 million and a renewal fee of NRs 20.13 Billion in ten years. The renewal fee can be paid in installment basis.
Earlier, NTA had called for the license for which 4 out of total 6 operators had applied. Nepal Telecom, the state-owned operator have already been running almost all of the telecom services all over the country. Ncell – the private telco run by European Giant TeliaSonera is aggressive with the excessive marketing for their GSM-based services.
With the license, they can run any telecom services like Local calls, STD, International trunk calls, cellular mobile (GSM, CDMA). But the main interest of all is for International trunk and GSM based Cellular mobile service. NTA believes that with the addition of two more telcos in GSM, the competition among the operators will further take the telecom development to a new level. They also have a firm belief that it will provide affordable and good quality services to subscribers in all parts of the country.
As known, NTA will be providing 6 MHz frequency bandwidth in 900 MHz to GSM operators. For that, NTA has to take back some frequency from NTC and Ncell to give it to UTL and Smart Tel. Now, the real challenge for the operators is to maximize the use of limited frequency spectrum in GSM.
