The Bills Committee endorsed the amendment even as Public Accounts Committee (PAC) and Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority (CIAA) had instructed the government not to effect any changes in the telecommunication rules, particularly as they were investigating into the cases of possible anomalies in licenses awarded in the past.[break]
However, disregarding the PAC´s and CIAA´s instructions, the Bills Committee even endorsed a provision that paved the way for introduction of ´Unified Licensing Policy´ - a proposal pushed by Nepal Telecommunication Authority (NTA) even though it was rejected by the government four years ago.
As per the policy, NTA can allow new operators to operate all types of telecom services with a single license by paying fee of Rs 370 million.
The new amendment states that the renewal period of all the operators, which got the license under clause 23 (2) of Nepal Telecommunication Act, will be 10 years.
As Nepal Telecom (NT) and Ncell were provisioned to renew their licenses in every 10 years, the new change will not impact them.
However, four operators -- Nepal Satellite Telecom, United Telecom Limited, Smart Telecom and STM Sanchar -- and ISPs will benefit from the new change, as presently they were required to renew their licenses every five years.
“The new amendment will pave the way for approval of Unified Licensing Policy and operators under this license will also get renewal time of ten years,” said the MoIC source. The source further stated that the amendment was necessary to ensure level playing field for the operators, particularly those operating in rural areas.
The new amendment also restricts the regulator - NTA - from taking independent decisions on matters related with its staff. It will now need to take a prior permission from the MoIC while taking decisions on employees´ salary, recruitment and other facilities.
Secretary at MoIC Shreedhar Gautam said the newly approved regulation also requires the regulator to get its annual program and budget endorsed from the ministry before finalizing them.
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