ISPs threaten to increase the internet price from Poush 15

The internet price in Nepal will increase from Poush 15, following the threat from ISPAN  to the Government. They have been covering the TSC charges with the agreement between the government and them. But now they will charge the consumers of the 13% TSC as they blame the government for no work as per the agreement.

With the start of the new Fiscal year, Government applied the TSC to the internet service with which the internet price rose by 13%. After huge criticism of the price hike, ISPs and Government inked a deal for not to increase the price to the consumers while giving some facilities to the ISPs. Then, ISPs themselves covered up the 13% TSC charges. Now, ISPs are not satisfied with the implementation of the deal made 5 months before. So, they submitted a letter to MoCIT minister Mr. Gokul Baskota for the no progress and the price hike. ISPAN stands for Internet service provider association of Nepal.

One of the main issue in the agreement between ISPAN and Government was the facilitating the rent of electricity and telephone poles for the ISP cables. As Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) recently increased the rent price and NTA (Nepal Telecommunication Authority) was apathy for their issues, this annoyed the ISPs. They say due to the rise in the rent price, they have been put into a financial burden. So, they submitted their plan to the Government.

Read more: Nepal ranks 89th in Fixed broadband in the world.

Auto-Pricing of Internet

Government had floated the idea of auto-pricing of the internet, during the hike of internet price by the implementation TSC. The logic behind auto-pricing is that the internet bandwidth price has been reduced significantly over the years. So, Government wants to adjust the internet price as per the bandwidth costs.

Whereas ISPs reject the idea as they say bandwidth costs are based on the agreement between ISP and the bandwidth service provider. They also say that the total price is not solely based on the bandwidth costs only. They claim that the reduced bandwidth cost has allowed them to provide high-speed internet packages at an affordable rate.

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