‘Paralysis’ at NTA puts entire telecom sector in chaos

Attempts to appoint a chief at NTA have been engulfed in disputes over the selection of ineligible candidates due to political pressure THE Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) has been “paralysed” due to a series of controversial decisions by the government that have been regularly challenged at court. All the tasks related to licence, tariff approval and new programmes have remained pending because the NTA has no chairman. Attempts to appoint a chief executive have been engulfed in disputes over the selection of ineligible candidates due to political pressure. “Nothing important is happening except for normal administrative work so that the staff can get their monthly salaries,” said an NTA official. He added with the NTA’s ad hoc board not being able to hold meetings, they had not been able to renew licence of internet service provider (ISP) Web Surfer and limited mobility licence of United Telecom Limited (UTL) for Morang and Sunsari. Similarly, the NTA’s annual programme for the next fiscal year, licence issuance to new network service providers (NSPs) and ISPs, tariff approval of Nepal Telecom and Ncell, licence scrapping of four ISPs who have remained out of contact, utilisation of the Rural Telecommunication Development Fund (RTDF) in the district optical fibre plan, study for 4G spectrum auctioning and assignment of WiMax spectrum to ISPs, among others, have remained in limbo. NTA regulates and monitors more than 200 licensees. The sector itself has been hurt due to the perpetual controversies generated at every step of the way by the government’s ill-advised decisions regarding appointment, unified licence and spectrum policy. Meanwhile, the NTA has also not been able to fill vacant posts which has left it short-handed. Five posts including that of a deputy director and engineers have been scrapped in the last one year. “The NTA cannot take policy-level decisions,” said director Ananda Raj Khanal. He added that they were reluctant to take urgent decisions for fear of running into legal hassles as only the board is authorized to do so. The uncertainty has prevented NTA from carrying out many projects that were approved for the current fiscal year. Khanal said that they gave the go-ahead only to projects costing less than Rs 350,000. “Since technology is changing so rapidly, decision making has to be fast and effective to adopt new technology,” said Surya Bahadur Raut, a telecom expert. He added that because of habitual delays, WiMax has just been launched in the country when other countries are already switching to 4G technology or long-term evolution. The sector started descending into chaos last August when NTA chairman Bhesh Raj Kanel resigned in protest against lack of cooperation from the Ministry of Information and Communications. Subsequently, the government named Digambar Jha as the new chairman. His appointment was challenged at the Supreme Court which issued a stay order leaving the NTA headless.