Kathmandu, August 27

The government plans to crack down on illegal import and sales of mobile devices. Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) is gearing up to check whether the devices being traded in the local market meet the basic technical and safety requirements.

The Telecommunication Act 1997 requires the manufacturer or distributor or dealer of any brand or model of cell phones to be traded in Nepal to first get type approval certification (TAC) from NTA. Based on the approval of NTA, customs offices give permission to import the mobile handsets.

Issuance of a TAC to a handset model means that the particular mobile meets the minimum regulatory, technical and safety requirements.

“We plan to conduct sample monitoring across the nation with a target to see if devices being sold have received type approval or not,” said Min Prasad Aryal, spokesperson for NTA. He said that any dealer found to be selling mobile handsets that lack TAC would be seized by the authority and necessary action would be taken against the perpetrators.

The TAC that is issued for cell phones and tablets are in place to ensure the safety of users. It encompasses four technical parameters, which include any handset being imported into the country should have battery capacity of 850 milliampere-hour (mAh) and should have the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) standard of maximum 2 W/Kg, averaged over 10 gm of tissue, among others.

As per the annual plan of NTA, it will conduct inspection in the central region within the first trimester of the current fiscal year, in the eastern region during the second trimester and markets of western, mid-western and far-western regions in the last

trimester.

In 2012-13 too, the authority had announced of plans to monitor the devices being sold in the market to check if all of them are typeapproved. However, the plan had failed due to lack of resources and negligence of NTA.

The telecom regulator has long been asking the traders to import the handsets only after getting TAC to address health concerns and discourage illegal import and sales of mobile sets. Aryal said that compared to the scenario of the market two years ago, more

distributors and dealers have taken TAC now and the imports through grey market have also come down.

As per NTA, basically Chinese mobile devices that lack international brand recognition, have less receiver sensitivity and such sets do not have international certification either.