KATHMANDU: Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) is preparing to issue a licence to at least one firm to function as an infrastructure sharing company. On Tuesday, the authority submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) seeking consent in this regard.

The Telecommunication Infrastructure Promotion Committee under MoIC has to give a go-ahead to NTA as the issue is related to infrastructure development and sharing. In a bid to bring down the cost of network expansion and avoid duplication in infrastructure development, the authority for long has been planning to introduce a provision of sharing and establishing a separate company.

Would help slash cost of network expansion and avoid duplication in infrastructure development

“We will speed up work on issuing the permit as soon as there is agreement in principle from the committee,” said Digambar Jha, chairman of NTA. According to him, even though they are yet to work on operation modality, the company basically will be able to acquire or take on lease existing infrastructure and build new infrastructure like mobile towers and optical fibre to share them among the telecom operators for a certain fee.

As there is no standard rule on sharing of telecom infrastructure, companies so far have been investing individually to take their services in the same area, which is known as duplication in infrastructure expansion. Number of companies to be issued licence, the ownership type, charge for the permit and responsibilities of the infrastructure sharing companies, among other issues would be determined after the decision of the committee, according to Jha.

A majority of the investment of telecom companies goes into building infrastructure as it is the basic need to expand service. Telecom companies, including major ones like Nepal Telecom and Ncell, which annually make huge investments in infrastructure, for long have been showing interest in using telecom infrastructure jointly. However, sharing had been impossible due to lack of rules. Even as the guideline for common use of such infrastructure has already been approved by NTA, it is pending with the committee for approval.

To issue the permission and promotion of infrastructure sharing among telecom companies, the committee’s approval is necessary. But, despite its formation three years ago, it has not held even a single meeting till date. The panel is headed by the communications minister and includes secretaries from the communications, forest, environment, physical infrastructure, energy and land reform ministries as members.

The secretary of the National Planning Commission, a joint secretary of the communications ministry and three persons representing telecom and broadcasting companies also sit on the committee. NTA officials said that along with the proposal to issue permit to infrastructure sharing company, two other proposals on guideline of infrastructure sharing and tower construction are pending with the committee.