Rise in Internet tariff returned

The increase in internet price has been returned after the Internet price revision committee come up with a recommendation and agreed with the stakeholders. Now customers do not need to pay the increased price for the internet service.

After the implementation of Telecom service charge (TSC) on the internet, telecom operators and ISPs have increased the internet tariff. There was a huge criticism from public for the increase of the internet price. The committee formed to study the price revision of internet tariff have forged an agreement with the stakeholders including ISPAN. They have agreed for not to increase the price of the internet service, which is advantageous to the customers.

As the internet bandwidth price from abroad has gone down, Government officials have been arguing for not letting the ISPs to increase the internet price. As per the recommendation of the committee in several issues, the revised internet price has been restored to the one before Shrawan 1.

No price revert for corporate customers.

Kantipur says that the price revert is only for the individual customers. The corporate users will still have to pay for the increased price. That means the revised price will remain for the corporate customers.

Here is what people expressed before for the rise in the internet, read the comments in the post.

Recommendations from the committee

Here are the key points that the committee recommended.

1. Studying the Internet service bandwidth and Fixed broadband service, the Internet service tariff after the implementation of 13% TSC on Internet need not increase. So, there will be no increment in the price of the internet service to the public.
2. Different supports are recommended to provide to aid the ISPs.
   • TSC not to be included for the price of routers and equipment. And TSC not to be included in Intranet/Lease Line/Data connectivity.
   • ISPs can apply up to 50 % support and maintenance amount in Fixed wired broadband. TSC will not be applied for Support and Maintenance tariff.
   • The price of renting NEA OPGW and poles will be recommended through Energy ministry to NEA for not to increase.
   • The optical fiber of Nepal Telecom (NTC) will be recommended to share it with the Internet service providers (ISP).
   • ISPs and telcos need to support the government’s plan to expand information technology to all people. The price will be automatically revised later based on the internet bandwidth price and other costs involved.
3. NTA to regulate the internet price as per the following
   • ISPs and telcos need to take approval for all the tariffs and price before implementation. And they will stop the old practice of charging customers without approval from NTA.
   • NTA to implement the benchmarks for implementing price based on the investment of service providers. Source

After all of these recommendations, ISPs have agreed not to increase the internet price. But we are not sure of what the tariffs will be for the internet data tariff of telcos. We have already found that some of the people rely on the cellular network for their home internet.

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