According to Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA), the number of internet users in Nepal presently stands at 5.14 million. However, more than 4.7 million of them are limiting the internet access to mobile browsing only, shows the latest NTA statistics.[break]
The statistics suggests that ISPs and telcos are failing to attract potential individual users although wide ranges of technology have been made available.
The NTA´s own assessment on the situation is; cost is the major factor behind such a low percentage of active home users.
"It is true that the GPRS users have tremendously gone up, but they can not be considered as active users as their internet activities are limited to checking emails and browsing social networking sites," admitted President of Internet Service Providers Association of Nepal (ISPAN) Binaya Bohara.
Ananda Raj Khanal, chairman of NTA attributed higher pricing for the services for the low growth of active users. "We still do not have access to cheap bandwidth," he said. "Although the cost of bandwidth is decreasing gradually, most of the content we use has servers abroad and we require larger bandwidth making it costlier," he told Republica.
The state-owned operator´s recently launched WiMAX based high-speed internet was expected to make a difference. But unfortunately that is not likely to happen anytime soon, for Nepal Telecom (NT) has made it clear that its target groups were corporate users.
"We plan to make the service available to individual users in more than a month. But still our focus would be on corporate users in the urban areas," said Guna Keshari Pradhan, spokesperson of NT.
Besides, although the WiMAX package offered by NT is competitive, its installation cost is beyond the reach of mass users as the cost of the dongle alone stands at Rs 12,000.
The NT´s other newly launched service IP CDMA, which offers up to 3.1 MBPS, is also targeted to handset users. The tariff of this services is set at 5 paisa from 100 kb data volume, but again the users would need to purchase EVDO (Evolution Data Optimized) enabled smartphone, which costs Rs 13,500 along with R-UIM (removable user identity module), to use it.
Likewise, the leading operator Ncell charges 80 paisa (exclusive of taxes) per 1 MB under its 500 MB package, which again is not affordable for regular subscribers, the NTA officials said.
The other factor behind behind low growth of internet users, according to NTA, was the utility part as negligible number of users are using internet for production. "If someone uses internet for economic development, the cost becomes a secondary issue. But when people use it for communication and entertainment only, the cost is obvious to turn them off," said Khanal.
ISPs, however, claim that the trend of active users was positive particularly on WiFi and fiber optics internet. "The competition amongst operators is growing and we are certain it will lead to decrease in rate further," Bohara said.
Although majority of wireless users complain that they are not satisfied with the services they get because of poor speed, it holds more than 50 percent market share of ISPs (apart from telcos) which have a total customer base of 75,000.
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