Dinesh Kumar Sharma, immediate past chairperson of NTA, made such an argument while defending his decision of not auctioning off 3G frequency when he was at the helm of the telecom regulator. [break]
Sharma was responding to queries of lawmakers at a sub-committee of Public Accounts Committee (PAC) of legislature-parliament. The sub-committee is looking into irregularities by NTA while awarding 2G and 3G frequency.
“3G technology evolved gradually from 2G, 2.5G and 2.75G. It is just an improvement over 2G technology and not a new technology in itself,” Shah said, trying to take to take benefit of lawmakers´ lack of knowledge in the issue.
Clarifying the reason behind allocating 3G frequency to Nepal Telecom (NT) and private operator Ncell at the price of 2G, he said 3G technology is still expensive and that operators were still not generating satisfactory revenue from it.
NTA had assigned 10 MHz bandwidth each to NT and Ncell for operation of 3G at the price of 2G, which is very nominal compared to other countries.
The sub-committee had also summoned two former chairpersons Bhupa Rajbhandari and Suresh Kumar Pudasaini on the day.
All the former chairpersons argued that it was not practical to follow international examples without considering returns of that particular service.
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