The agreement was reached during a meeting between Minister for Information and Communication Raj Kishor Yadav and the officials from Indian Ministry of Information and Broadcasting last month in New Delhi. “There has been an agreement to sort out the problem of FM radio frequency overlapping through coordination between the concerned ministries of the two countries whenever such problems emerge,” said Under Secretary Anup Nepal, who heads frequency management section at the Ministry of Information and Communication (MoIC).[break]
The agreement comes in the wake of government´s failure to maintain trans-border coordination while issuing radio frequency licenses to FM radio operation mainly in Tarai districts. The trans-border coordination is effected at the government level through International Telecommunication Authority (ITU), a specialized agency of the United Nations that looks after the management of radio and telecom frequencies.
Nepal and India fall under Region III in ITU categorization in reference to FM frequency distributions and have been allowed FM frequencies ranging between 87.6 MHZ to 108 MHZ.
The problem of FM frequency overlapping has emerged as neither Nepal nor India has so far engaged in trans-border coordination through ITU while issuing the licenses in the bordering areas.
MoIC officials said at least two FM stations, one in Jhapa (Kanchenjunga FM) and another in Kanchanpur (Suklaphanta FM), were forced to alter their frequencies due to signal overlap. But altering frequencies will be impossible once the frequency distribution reaches the saturation point.
Unlike in Nepal, it is mandatory in India to register frequencies for radios and walkie-talkie with the ITU before distribution.
But as Nepal does not have any provision to register the frequencies with the ITU, many FM radios operating in border districts often face problems in operating using the assigned frequency.
According to MoIC, over 50 FM radios are operating in various Tarai districts bordering India. The problem is likely to grow as Indian authorities have also adopted liberal policy for issuing FM radio licenses in recent years.
While telecom service operators in Nepal are coordinating on their own with their counterparts in India, Nepal government has registered only short wave (SW) and medium wave (MW) frequencies of the state-owned Radio Nepal with the ITU so far.
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