KATHMANDU: Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) is preparing to monitor and evaluate Nepal Satellite Telecom (NST)’s service to check if the company has completed network expansion as per the licence condition. A third-party consultant is being hired by the authority in this regard.

NST, the operator of Hello Nepal brand, has already informed NTA that it completed network expansion under the second phase. The firm has been planning to go nationwide after making its telephone service available on demand in western development, mid-western development and far-western development regions.

“In the second phase, the company has an obligation to take telephone service to 50 per cent of the village development committees (VDCs) and municipalities of the far-western and western regions,” said Achyuta Nanda Mishra, assistant spokesperson of NTA. “We want to verify if the company did so.” Going by the NTA allocated time, NST was supposed to have completed service expansion of second phase two years ago.

After NST delayed service expansion, it had been provided extra time of one year twice by NTA. In the third phase, the company will have to be able to make service available on demand in the entire mid-western, western and far-western regions by building required telecommunication infrastructure. Completion of this phase will allow NST to go nationwide after taking the permission of the regulator.

NST is allowed to expand service in CDMA and GSM technology and it had started service fromun-served rural VDCs of mid-western development region being based in Dang. After completing service expansion to 273 VDCs of mid-western development region in the first phase as per the government obligation, it had received permission for the second phase. NTA records show that NST has 286,452 customers in fixed line and limited mobility services as of February 2015.

NST was issued basic telecommunication licence in February 2008 with a condition to start service in the mid-western development region and progressively expanding such services to other regions of the country after fulfilling specified roll-out obligations. However, going nationwide for NST is not going to be easy because of policy issues related to licence renewal fee and frequency, according to a source at the NTA.

“Either NST has to get the unified licence or the NTA will have to make a separate decision which gives a sense of equal level playing field to all companies,” the source said. As per the existing provision, NST is liable to pay Rs 2.25 million licence renewal fee, where as other telecom companies — Nepal Telecom, Ncell and Smart Telecom — which have permits to operate service nationwide are required to pay licence renewal fee of Rs 20 billion each.

Another firm, United Telecom Ltd (UTL), has also agreed to pay Rs 20 billion renewal fee by obtaining the unified licence that allows operation of GSM mobile across the nation.

The government had implemented unified licence targeting small companies but NST has not shown any interest. Its licence term will expire in February 2018.