KATHMANDU, JUL 07 -Nepal Telecom (NT) is gearing up to launch a new project-Fibre to the Home (FTTH) in a bid to offer customers the fastest Internet as well as other value added services including voice, television. As part of the FTTH project, the company will install equipment in 10 exchanges in Kathmandu, Biratnagar, Birgunj, Butwal, Pokhara and Bhadrapur to enable its system to provide the fibre cable service.
“The installation works in Sundhara and Naxal exchanges are near completion and we will start service as pilot one in some areas like Durbar Marg,” said Bhagat Man Singh Pradhan, deputy managing director at the NT. He added that the company was targeting to distribute the service from early next fiscal year 2013-14, starting with corporate clients in the initial phase. Considered as the best solutions for data service, the FTTH can carry high-speed broadband services integrating voice, data and video, and reach directly to home or building, for which it is also called Fiber to the Building (FTTB). The NT has already completed the installation of optical fibre links to the exchanges known as fibre to the exchanges (FTTE).
Pradhan said that the NT was working out on the type of value added services to be included, tariffs and installation fee. Normally, the FTTH provides data transmission at the speed of 100 Mbps. Some telecom companies have even started an Internet service with an incredible speed of 1 gigabit per second, which is 100 times faster than the average Internet speed in the US.
Currently in the local market, Internet service providers such as World Link Communications and Classic Tech are providing internet service with speed of up to 10 Mbps and 15 Mbps respectively. Even as Classic Tech offers data service of up to 15 Mbps through optical fibre connection, it does not have video and voice telephony services as its licence condition not allowing do so.
The state-owned company has also kept the FTTH project based on the next generation network technology on the priority list in the budget for the next fiscal year too. NT officials said that they would gradually replace the existing copper wire fixed line with fibre cables.
As demand for high bandwidth by the modern multimedia application increases, many of the telecom companies in the world have replaced the copper wire with optical fibre from the exchange to the customers’ premises.
The NT has said that it would gradually expand the service across the country after covering the all business centres. Even as the NT is preparing to take the fibre cable lines to homes, it is faced with the shortage of local multimedia contents for consumption of bandwidth. NT officials said that the company needed to develop contents related to various walks of life which would greatly reduce the external bandwidth consumption and save national revenues from going out of the country.
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