The Nepal Telecommuni-cations Authority has stated that it will soon ask Nepal Telecom and Ncell to provide figures of their 3G data service users separately. The operators have been providing data that includes their GPRS users.
As of mid-June this year, there were 2.66 million people in Nepal using internet service through GPRS. However, it is not clear how many of them are subscribers to high speed 3G data service. Ncell, the market leader in GSM mobile service, has been offering 3G data card service for the last 10 months. Nepal Telecom, the state-owned telecom service provider, started the service in May.
“We will soon ask telecom operators to provide the number of their 3G data service subscribers,” said Kumar Prasad Sharma, director of the authority. Authority officials said that all the service providers were required to submit the real number of their subscribers separately based on the services they offer.
After two dozen internet service providers (ISP) failed to submit figures about their subscribers monthly, the authority is also preparing to re-direct them to make available the data. There are 50 ISPs in the country. Despite the authority’s directive, only 26 ISPs have provided the number of their users.
According to the recent MIS data released by the authority, the 26 ISPs in the country have a subscriber base of 48,689 as of mid-June. This is a fall of 20.18 percent compared to 61,000 subscribers as of mid-June 2009. For the last couple of years, ISPs have been finding it hard to continue their business following the launch of ADSL internet service by Nepal Telecom, increased use of GPRS and now the launch of 3G data card service by telecom operators.
Binay Bohara, president of the Internet Service Providers Association of Nepal, said that many people had stopped subscribing to dial-up internet service during the last one year. According to him, people were also reluctant to subscribe to cable internet which is comparatively dearer because of the problem of load-shedding.
Among the customers of ISPs, 13,276 belong to the dial-up segment, 21,080 to wireless modem and optical fibre ethernet and 14,333 to cable modem or cable internet for data service. Based on the number of subscribers, Wordlink Communications has the largest subscriber base of 19,858. Broad Link Network and Communication has a user base of 11,792. Two other major ISPs, Mercantile Communication and Subisu Cablenet, have 9,445 and 4,150 subscribers respectively.
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