82 percent Nepalis have access to phone services

KATHMANDU, NOV 26 -Nepal’s telephone service penetration rate reached 82.49 percent as of mid- September. The Nepal Telecommuni-cations Authority (NTA) said that 21.85 million Nepalis have access to telecom services out of the total population of 26.4 million.

Cell phone users make up nearly 90 percent of the total users of telecom services. Mobile services are being provided by two main telecom companies-Ncell and Nepal Telecom (NT). Two other operators-Smart Telecom and United Telecom Limited (UTL)-are also preparing to go nationwide with their mobile services by obtaining a unified telecom licence.

NT has 19.4 million mobile subscribers including 973,392 users of CDMA mobile service, according to the latest Management Information System report of the NTA. Wider network coverage, value added services and cheaper service rates resulting in competition among the companies are the reasons behind the faster growth of mobile service than other telephone services, said the NTA.


Other telephone services such as fixed line, limited mobility and satellite telephone have a combined subscriber base of 2.4 million users. Ncell’s user base has reached 10.7 million, NT 9.4 million and Smart Telecom more than 800,000.

Likewise, UTL’s service is being used by 700,000 plus users, and Nepal Satellite’s service has reached around 150,000 users. CG Communications (formerly STM Telecom Sanchar), which is also planning to get a unified licence for mobile service operation, has 5,385 subscribers. A unified licence allows operators to provide multiple telecom services including mobile service.

So far, the unified licence has been issued to Smart Telecom. NTA officials said that UTL was at the final stages of making preparations to obtain the licence. “The licence to be issued to UTL is ready,” said a senior official at the NTA. He added that they would give the licence to UTL as soon as it completes the formalities by producing a bank guarantee for the licence fee and licence renewal fee.

Meanwhile, the data service penetration rate rose to 27.18 percent. NTA officials said that the number of data subscribers had been growing rapidly due to the availability of different options in the market and increased use of smartphones. As of mid-September, the total number of subscribers of data services amounted to 7.2 million.

Ncell, NT and UTL hold 98 percent of the data market. The rest of the market is shared among 29 internet service providers (ISPs), according to the NTA report. There are around four dozen ISPs as per the NTA. However, hardly a dozen are operating actively.