A sub-committee formed to study telecommunication services last week asked MoIC to instruct NTA to cut IUC charges because the number of illegal VoIP were increasing as the charge was high in the present context. The recommendations were prepared after two-month long study and approved by a full committee last week. [break]
Earlier NTA had sought opinions from telecom operators if the IUC could be reduced to Rs 0.72 per minute. At present telecom operators are charging Rs 4.5 to Rs 6 per minute while transferring international calls depending on the country where the call originate. Nepal receives around 240 million minutes of international calls annually worth around Rs 23 billion .
Nepal Telecom (NT) and Ncell have opposed NTA´s proposal saying the reduced tariff will severely impact large chunk of their income as number of international calls were not going to increase in the same ratio.
The committee has also asked NT through MoIC to speed up the project of 10 million GSM lines. The project was delayed by more than four months after the Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) started a probe suspecting irregularities in the tender process. NT is preparing to address the demand of GSM lines till 2015 which is going to cost NT around Rs 5.7 billion.
NT is handing over the 10 million GSM lines project to Chinese vendor Huawei Technologies. Huawei had proposed the lowest bid of Rs 5.7 billion for the project.
The committee has further asked telecom operators and Nepal Electricity Authority (NEA) for infrastructure sharing. “We have asked the government to come up with clear policy for infrastructure sharing,” said Jitendra Sonar, chairman of the development committee.
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