The number of new subscribers recorded during the year was more than half of what the telecom operators had managed to attain over the past decade.[break] The number of subscribers of mobile service, which started in Nepal in 1999, was 6.1 million (including UTL and CDMA users) till mid-October 2009. The recent statistics released by major mobile operators shows that the figure has jumped to 9.3 million as at mid-October 2010.
The expansion has sharply improved the penetration of mobile services, raising it by nearly six folds in just three years. Currently, the penetration of mobile service stands well over 33 percent of the total population. According to Nepal Telecom Authority (NTA), number of mobile phone subscribers in Nepal was 1.57 million (5.9 percent of penetration) in mid July, 2007.
Nepal Telecom (NT) and Ncell are the major players in the mobile services market. In term of client base, NT remains the largest mobile service provider with subscriber base (including GSM and CDMA) of 5.1 million in mid-October 2010. Ncell has 3.7 million customers. However, year wise trend shows that Ncell is expanding market more aggressively than NT. For instance, over the last one year ending mid-October 2010, NT added just 1.15 million clients (including 740,000 GSM users), whereas Ncell managed to add 1.7 million customers.
Sanju Koirala, Ncell´s corporate communication manager, said the company was adding 200,000 new clients every month. The largest private mobile operator in the country has also unveiled a plan to invest $100 million by 2011 with the target of covering 90 percent of total population.
NT too is planning to add 1.8 million GSM mobile lines by the end of mid-July, 2011 and add another 5 million GSM mobile lines in the future.
Likewise, United Telecom Limited (UTL) -- the third largest telecom company -- has 500,000 subscribers as of mid August, 2010. It had 215,890 clients in mid-October, 2009.
There are six telephone service providers and all of them have received the license to operate mobile service. Of them, three are hitting the market soon.
Kailash Prasad Neupane, spokesperson of NTA, attributed the growth in mobile subscribers to introduction of cheap technology, development of IT and competition among service providers. "The craze of mobile phone amongst youngsters also increased dramatically in recent years," he added.
Although NTA has not done any impact assessment study, Neupane stated that the service expansion have mainly facilitated vegetables and other farmers to link their produces with the market and contributed a lot in the field of health and education.
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