Kathmandu, November 3

Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) has opened licences for interested firms to provide telecommunications infrastructure service in Nepal.

Publishing a notice today, the telecommunications sector regulator of the country sought request for proposal (RfP) from interested and eligible firms — both domestic and foreign — to provide telecommunications infrastructure service in the country and promote sharing of telecom infrastructure.

This is the first time that the government is gearing up to issue licence to this effect.

NTA has plans to initially issue telecommunications infrastructure service licence to two eligible firms.

Min Prasad Aryal, spokesperson for NTA, informed that the authority is gearing up to issue the telecommunications infrastructure service licence as per the Telecommunications Infrastructure Regulation, 2017 which has envisioned to promote telecommunications infrastructure sharing in the country and reduce the cost of telecommunications services.

Currently, telecommunications service providers in the country have been developing their own infrastructure to cater telecommunication services across the country. This has not only made telecom services costlier in Nepal but the telecommunication infrastructure built by telecom operators on their own are not being fully utilised.

“Operators in the country are using independent infrastructure to deliver services at present, which requires huge investment from the telecom operator. This has certainly made telecom services costlier in Nepal,” Aryal said.

As per Aryal, the firm that acquires telecommunications infrastructure service licence will develop relevant telecommunications infrastructure across the country, basically in rural areas and allow telecommunications service providers to use the infrastructure to deliver their services.

“The joint use of telecommunications infrastructure will provide financial relief to the service

providers, which will ultimately help bring down telecommunications service cost in Nepal,” said Aryal.

The telecommunications infrastructure service provider will promote the joint use of telecom

infrastructure among telecom operators charging a certain amount from the operators.

Meanwhile, NTA has said that any foreign company applying for the telecommunications service licence should have 20 per cent share of a domestic firm to be eligible for the licence.

Interested firms are required to submit their applications at NTA within December 17.