Nepal Telecom, the government owned telecom operator has highest subscriber growth, according to latest MIS. Ntc is also the no.1 telecom operator of Nepal with large subscriber base, of 15 million. The number includes GSM, CDMA mobile subscribers, CDMA Fixed/ Wireless Local loop subscribers and Landline subscribers. Ncell, the private operators comes second in the no of subscribers with 14 million. All of the subscribers in Ncell are from GSM family (2G, 3G).
According to the data, Nepal Telecom adds 2 Lakh customers per month in average from Baishak till Shrawan. The growth is also increasing in Smart tel, although the subscriber addition is in average 10 thousands. Except these two, all other operators growth rate is slowing down. Ncell, the private mobile operator of Nepal has added 1.4 Lakh subscribers in average, per month. There are around 100 new subscribers addition in United Telecom, which has services from CDMA technology only.
The telephone density of Nepal has just crossed 120 percent, which means out of 100 people, 120 have access to any means of telephony. The above figure is according to the no of subscription of telephones ( Fixed, WLL, Mobile or limited mobility, GMPCS: Global mobile personal communication by satellite ).
As one customer may have one or two SIM cards or some of them might have already been inactive for sometime, the no of subscribers does not actually represent the telephone density, that is the penetration of telephone to people. So, the no of active subscribers is always less than the total subscribers.
The Global data analytic says the unique mobile subscription is around 60 percent of the total no of mobile subscription. The figure may be the same for Nepal too. Quoting NTA spokesperson Min Prasad Aryal, Kantipur daily reports that the growth of Nepalese telecom operators will slow down more, as it can be said the market is quite saturated.
The market share of telecom operators are respectively, Nepal Telecom: 48 percent, Ncell: 45 percent, Smart telecom (STPL): 4 percent, UTL: 2 percent. By Market share, Nepal Telecom stands the top most position. Ncell stands the second most position whereas Smart telecom assumes the third position.
