The recent Management Information System (MIS) report published by Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) shows the number of data users and Internet subscribers grew by 37 percent in 2012/13 compared to a year earlier. The subscribers of voice service increased by 24 percent during the review year. [break]
According to NTA, the number of data users increased from 5.04 million to 6.91 million while the users of voice telephony increased from 17.28 million to 21.33 million.
Though voice telephony is the major revenue spinner for telecom operators, the increasing number of data subscribers has forced telcos as well as ISPs to focus on data services.
Telcos like Nepal Telecom (NT), Ncell and United Telecom Limited (UTL) as well as about four dozen ISPs are working hard to provide better Internet service at reasonable rates.
“We are currently focused on providing high speed data at reasonable price to our subscribers. We are currently offering data package ranging from 3 MB to 10 GB with prices starting from 0.29 paisa per MB (exclusive of taxes),” Milan Sharma, corporate communication expert at Ncell, told Republica.
According to the MIS report, Ncell has the highest data subscriber base of 3.4 million, followed by NT with 3.2 million subscribers and UTL with 95,675 subscribers. Similarly, ISPs have a total of 85,821 subscribers.
State-run Nepal Telecom hopes the ongoing network upgradation will give it the edge in the competitive data market. “We aim to add 2.9 million subscribers (including data users) in this fiscal year,” Guna Keshari Pradhan, spokesperson for NT, said, adding that the lack of network capacity hindered its subscriber growth in the last fiscal year.
Officials of NT said they are focusing on both the quality and quantity of data and voice telephony service in its new network. Pradhan said NT will launch attractive data packages ranging from 25 MB to 10 GB capacity within September.
At present, NT is charging Rs 1 per MP (exclusive of taxes) for GPRS data. It has already introduced data package for Sky Pro users under which customers are charged 50 paisa per MB.
Ncell is also focusing on enhancing capacity of its GPRS and 3G network. It is currently busy expanding its network infrastructure. ISPs are also coming up with attractive schemes to woo customers by offering them affordable rates.
According to NTA, Ncell enjoys 50 percent share in data market, followed by NT (48 percent). UTL and ISPs each enjoy one percent share in data market.
Likewise, Ncell enjoys 49 percent share in voice telephony. State-run NT is at the second place with 43 percent, followed by Smart Telecom (4 percent), UTL (3 percent) and STM Telecom Sanchar (1 percent).
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