KATHMANDU: Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) has sought service rollout plan of United Telecom Ltd (UTL) to see how the company is planning to expand its services after obtaining the unified licence.

Even though UTL has paid the fee to get the licence, the telecom regulator is yet to complete the formalities. About a month ago, UTL had paid the licence fee and first installment of renewal charge to take the licence that allows it to operate multiple telecom services, including GSM mobile.

“We have asked UTL to submit its service rollout plan to know about its plans in expanding the service network,” said an official at NTA. The official said that the NTA Board would decide to give licence after going through the plan and completing the formalities related to frequency assignment.

Having entered the telecom market in 2004, UTL is the first private sector telecom operator in the country. So far, the company has been providing its telecom service based on CDMA technology. The official said that the company would require huge investment for service rollout as its existing network is based on only CDMA technology.

Till date, the company has expanded its CDMA technology based service in 42 districts of the country. As per the latest management information system report of NTA, the company has a total of 523,850 subscribers in its services — fixed line and limited mobility.

Similarly, the report shows the company’s internet subscribers standing at 61,595 as of mid-March, 2015.

Once NTA issues the licence, UTL will be the fourth telecom company to have the permission to go nationwide with GSM mobile service.

Besides two major telecom operators — Nepal Telecom and Ncell — Smart Telecom had also become eligible to operate nationwide GSM mobile service after it acquired unified licence two years ago.

However, Smart Telecom has been delaying service expansion as per its service rollout plan submitted to NTA.