Kathmandu, May 16

Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) has initiated works to amend the Telecommunications Act, 1997, in a bid to make the document contextual and friendly to the telecommunications industry of the country.

NTA Spokesperson Min Prasad Aryal informed that a separate committee has been formed at the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) to make amendments to the two-decade-old Telecommunications Act.

“The committee is currently preparing an amendment draft of the Telecommunications Act. As soon as the draft is ready, NTA will forward it to the Cabinet for its endorsement,” he said. According to Aryal, amendments in the Telecommunications Act are required to be relevant with different new telecommunications issues that have emerged in recent years.

As the new Company Act has made it mandatory for private telecommunication service providers that have paid-up capital of more than Rs 50 million to convert to a public company within the next two years, NTA is obliged to amend the Telecommunications Act as this provision of the Company Act has to be addressed in the Telecommunications Act for its implementation.