Govt yet to fix emergency communication frequency

KATHMANDU: The government is yet to fix the frequency for emergency communication to facilitate rescue and relief activities while responding to natural disasters or national crises. As a consequence, the modern ‘rapid communication system’ received as support from Huawei International will not be used anytime soon.

On Monday, the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) was handed over the system for emergency communication, which is portable, and easy to install and use. The

Chinese telecommunication equipment manufacturer, as part of its relief support, had provided the system, which is known as eLTE rapid deployment broadband trunking and falls under the LTE technology.

The communication system provided by Huawei integrates the functions of a core network device, base station, and dispatching system into a compact chassis. Its core network functions as dispatcher, RF transmitter, antennae, and power supply, as per the product review by Huawei. It is considered useful for emergency communication among government agencies, rescuers or people involved in relief distribution, particularly in disaster-hit areas where other communication networks are down or have weak network signal.

The system provided by Huawei is based on wireless broadband technology, which enables the users to communicate via voice, high-speed internet and text in disaster-hit areas. It has capacity to provide 100 Mbit/s downlink and 50 Mbit/s uplink throughput. However, the government is yet to assign the spectrum for this new technology for emergency communication as well as for commercial use by telecom companies.

As per MoIC, the system will be handed over to Nepal Telecom (NT) under a condition to operate it when the government asks. As part of its support, Huawei is also imparting training to seven NT officials to operate the system.

“It is good support, but MoIC and Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) are yet to decide on emergency frequency to operate this kind of modern service during crisis,” said a source at MoIC. The source added that the country, being a member of International Telecommunication Union, should have already fixed the emergency spectrum in 1700 MHz and ultra high frequency (UHF) in 380 MHz band.

That is not all; despite the urgency, the government so far has not been able to implement a National Emergency Communication Plan.

NTA officials said they have already prepared a draft of emergency communication plan and it is in consultation phase. They said that allocation of frequencies for commercial use by firms or for emergency communication is done by the Radio Frequency Policy Determination Committee, which is headed by the communications minister. The committee has secretaries from other ministries like defence, home affairs and aviation, as members.