Kathmandu, June 3:

Deferring the recommendations of Nepal Telecom Authority (NTA) to allow full mobility on fixed wireless telephone to all operators, the government has granted only the state-owned Nepal Telecom (NT) to launch the service.

Last Monday, NTA, the regulatory body, had recommended the ministry of information and communication to allow all the telecom operators for full mobility on their wireless telepho-ne service based on code multiple division access (CDMA) technology. Under the new Unified Licensing System, NTA had recommended the full mobility for the CDMA hand held phon-es, which so far can only be use-d within the subscribing zone.

The ministry, however, directed the NTA to allow such facility for the NT only, barring the United Telecom Ltd (UTL), the only private CDMA phone operator for the service.

“The full mobility on CDMA handheld phones can be allowed for NT only now,” reads the ministry’s direction to NTA. Dinesh Sharma, chairman of NTA confirmed the ministry’s decision to allow full mobility to the NT only. “The NTA has already given green signal to go for full mobility to NT as per the government decision,” he said.

The ministry has said that based on the Telecom Act-2053, UTL doesn’t qualify for the full mobility for its handheld phones. But, the NTA has made the recommendations to allow all operators for full mobility based on ‘technology neutral’ provision under the Unified Licensing System and the Telecom Policy-2060.

“We have been disappointed with the government’s discriminatory decision,” a spokesperson of UTL told this daily.

He claimed that UTL should be allowed the full mobility, as its licence is identical to that of the NT in case of the CDMA based telephones.

He also said that the company would request the government and the concerned authorities to review the matter.