Nepal Telecom and NTA have made an agreement to build information highway along the section of Karnali and Sudurpaschim province. On Mangsir 19, 2076, Ntc MD Mr. Dilli Ram Adhikari and NTA chairman Mr. Purushottam Khanal have signed an MoU to lay optical fiber along 2500 km within 2 years.
During the program, the NTA chairman had expressed his belief that the information highway works will complete within the stipulated time. No wonder the information highway is one of the cornerstones of the economic prosperity announced by the Government.
Similarly, Mr. Dilli Adhikari said that this sort of project is crucial to develop digital Nepal which shall help for the technical and financial revolution in Nepal.
Information highway project
The information highway project will run along the Mid hill section of Province 6 and 7. The optical fiber also connects east to west and north to south, to Hulaki highways, District Headquarters, and Municipalities.
Nepal Telecom will develop the optical fiber route from Musikot of Rukum to Jhulaghat of Baitadi. So, in total 20 districts will benefit from this information highway project.
For the technical requirement of the project, there will be 96 core fiber along Mid-Hill highway, East-West Highway and Hulaki Highway. But the fiber along the district headquarter and Municipalities will be of 48 and 24 core respectively.
Similarly, the capacity of the information highway can be expanded up to 400 Gbps based on the requirement. The project plan includes the core router of either 100 Gbps Port and 10 Gbps port or a combination of both ports.
They have planned to include 26 DWDM equipment and 52 routers in the optical fiber network along Province Karnali and Sudurpaschim.
Both entities have also agreed to ink the deal after a detailed study.
Among the three projects to build the information highway along Mid-hill highway, Nepal Telecom had already started the optical fiber laying works in Province 1, 2 and 3. Similarly, NTA had given such optical fiber works to UTL along Province 4 and 5, for which NTA tried to scrap the deal citing no progress. But as UTL had got the stay order from the Supreme court, the decision is still pending for the same.
This optical fiber project along Province 6 and 7 was also originally awarded to Smart Telecom but NTA terminated the contract with Smart as there was very slow progress. Later Government decided to give the same project to Nepal Telecom.
