KATHMANDU, NOV 24 -The Nepal Telecommunica-tions Authority (NTA) is all set to come up with its annual programmes. The programmes are coming four months behind schedule due to the absence of a chairman at the authority and pending court cases.
After the court cleared the cases related to unified licence and an ad-hoc committee formed to function as a board two weeks ago, the telecom sector regulator became able to prepare the annual plan. The upcoming yearly plan has given continuity to many programmes of the last fiscal year.
Not able to effectively implement programmes started last year, it has repeated last year’s schemes such as construction of an office building, hold study on m-commerce, preparation of infrastructure sharing guideline, and holding study on migration to IPV6, among others.
The NTA has sent the annual programmes to the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) for its concurrence. “We hope to get the consensus from the ministry very soon,” said NTA Spokesperson Kailash Prasad Neupane.As per the Telecommunica-tions Act, NTA’s annual plan has to be approved by its board before submitting it to the MoIC for final go-ahead.
New programmes in the annual plan include preparation of GIS-based database of telecom infrastructure, study on Connect a School, Connect a Community, legal framework preparation for mobile number portability and preparation of regulation for tariff monitoring, according to the NTA. Amid increasing complaints from telecom service consumers on tariff, the authority this year is also preparing a guideline on tariff monitoring.
The government has long been planning to utilise resources with the Rural Telecommunication Development Fund for “Connect a School, Connect a Community” programme for taking broadband internet to government schools and community level. However, for the lack of proper framework, the project has not moved ahead so far.
Ananda Ra Khanal, acting chief of the NTA, said they would also carry out a study on e-banking and m-banking. He said amid growth in the number of mobiles users and customers of such banking services, it has been necessary to devise a legal framework.
The Nepal Rastra Bank has already incorporated e-banking and m-banking in one of its directives to regulate transactions made through such means. The NTA will also prepare guidelines on quality of service (QoS) regulation, national numbering plan and standardisation of radio towers.
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