In Chait alone (mid-March to mid-April 2009), the last month of the 2065 calendar year, an average of 5,368 telephone lines, both mobile and land ones, were distributed per day.
Ever since the telecom service was introduced to the public in 1975/76--upon the establishment of Nepal Telecommunications Corporation--never has the country seen a growth of telecom users on this scale before. All the credit for this must go to mobile phone technology, which has provided telecom serve providers with the flexibility to promptly issue any number of lines, and at very low cost.
Prior to the introduction of mobile phone services in Nepal, Nepal Telecommunications Corporation, now known as Nepal Telecom (NT), was distributing several hundred land lines per year. But to get access to this service, customers had to wait for months, if not years.
All this changed in May 1999, when NT acquired the license to distribute cell phone lines. For the first five years, this technology could not lure many customers due to the high tariff rates, but with the introduction of prepaid services, the entry of Spice Nepal Private Limited, a private cell phone company, and reduced call rates in later years, mobile phone service has now become the most favored means of communication.
Today, there are around 4.87 million mobile subscribers in the country. Of these, 2.99 million are subscribers of NT´s mobile numbers; 1.81 million are subscribers of the service provided by Spice Nepal Private Limited and 66,404 are subscribers of United Telecom Limited.
Due to distribution of these lines, the country´s tele-density rate has also shot up from around two percent to 20.83 percent, with cell phone lines contributing to 85 percent of the total telephone penetration. And as telecom companies are penetrating new markets and the mobile set is becoming both a social necessity and the most essential business accessory, more and more people are expected to have access to this technology.
The launching of mobile phone technology is also bringing more and more rural areas into the ambit of the telecom network. Today, only 420 village development committees (VDCs) in the country do not have access to telecom services, meaning that around 90 percent of the VDCs in the country have been served with at least one telephone line. Four years ago, only 50 percent of the VDCs had access to telephone services. Back then, the number of phone subscribers, including both mobile services subscribers and landline ones, hovered at around 470,000.
Related story
Modi talks with top leaders over telephone
