Every second man has a phone now

KATHMANDU, Sept 30: The recently concluded cencus shows that tele-density in the country has touched 51 percent, meaning every second person either owns a mobile phone or a fixed line phone.

The projected population of the country for 2011 was 28.58 million, two million more than the actual population as reported by the preliminary report of the National Population Census 2011.[break]

According to the latest report published by Nepal Telecommunication Authority (NTA), tele-density of the country stands at 46 percent. The statistics as of mid-August, 2011, show that 13.51 million subscribers are using fixed, mobile and other voice telephony services, which is 51 percent of total population of the country.

The number of people using voice telephony services was limited to 9.33 million including mobile phone users that was at 8.03 million in mid-August 2010.

Aananda Raj Khanal, Director of NTA, said that the tele-density has drastically gone up after the introduction of pre-paid GSM service, followed by free incoming calls.

"The handset is becoming cheaper and competition among operators has resulted in reduced tariff," he said, citing the reasons for the growth in recent years. He added that the presence of rural telecom operators has also contributed to some extent to improving the tele-density figures.

Highlights:

13.51 million are using voice telephony service; 35 percent increment in GSM users in a year; Internet penetration reaches 12.3 percent

Despite the positive increment, the mobile subscription in Nepal is not very low compared to developed countries and not overwhelming comparing to South Asian countries. The number of mobile users in India was 60 per 100 people in 2010, according to a report of International Telecommunication Union (ITU).

Khanal opined that lack of infrastructure development in telecommunication is a hinderance in telecom´s growth. "A rapid expansion of telecom infrastructure has taken place in the last 4 years," he said adding that the growth is satisfactory.

Among the mobile telephony segment, Ncell remains a leader with 52.8 percent market share while Nepal Telecom (NT) accounts for the remaining 47.2 percent market share.

Comparing the latest population with the number of Internet subscribers, a significant growth in Internet penetration rate can be observed. The Internet penetration rate as of mid-August was at 12.3 percent, almost double compared to same period last year.