NT replacing 500 plus old mobile towers

KATHMANDU-JULY 23--Nepal Telecom (NT)’s cell phone users are expected to start getting good experience of voice and mobile data service after one month. The company is replacing its old mobile towers with new ones in Kathmandu Valley from Wednesday onward.

The replacement of towers also known as base transceiver station (BTS) swapping is a part of the company’s project on adding capacity for 4.8 million new GSM mobile lines which is also targeted to enhance quality of voice, GRPS and 3G service. The company has stated that it is starting replacing of mobile towers from Kirtipur and Syuchatar areas.

As of now, the mobile service in the Valley is being provided through the towers built by ZTE Corporation, now they will be replaced by new site equipment of Huawei Technologies, which has been awarded the contract for adding capacity for 10 million GSM mobile lines.

“We plan to replace all site equipments of the Kathmandu Valley within a month which will improve the performance of out network for voice and 3G service,” said Guna Kesari Pradhan, spokesperson of NT. She also said that since the company would be swapping the towers, mobile users are likely to face technical problems for one month.

Currently, the company has 500 plus mobile towers built for its old project that had capacity of 3.5 million GSM mobile lines. The state-owned company, for long, has been facing criticism for providing poor quality service. Once the all BTS are swapped, the company will have good quality GSM network that enables customers avail better quality service, mobile internet and 3G service will cover whole Valley for high speed internet, according to NT.

The company is planning to replace all the BTS of the Valley in two lots. The first lot’s BTS replacement work includes up-gradation of 265 mobile towers with new site equipments of Huawei. As per the NT officials, the company will also be able to start distribution of new mobile lines after the swapping of towers and making its convergent real time billing system ready for GSM mobile lines.

Under the new 4.8 million line (package B of 10 million mobile line project) project, NT will have additional 1,039 towers for 2G and 3G service in 508 locations of the Valley. Sangita Pahadi, deputy manager at the Mobile Service Directorate of the NT said they were targeting to improve service quality and start distribution of lines under 4.8 million project within September this year. “Since we have huge customer base in the GSM segment, it is taking some time for making convergent billing applicable,” she added.

As per the agreement, Huawei has to complete package B by June 2014. The package B covers the Kathmandu valley and the Western Development Region and has a capacity to operate 2G, 3G, and 4G services, whereas package A having 5.2 million lines capacity is for the Eastern, Mid-Western, Far Western and Central regions excluding the Kathmandu valley.