Some six weeks ago, the largest telecom company of the country had said it would introduce EVDO (Evolution, Data Optimized) service -- an internet service operating on advanced CDMA technology -- within two months. However, due to technical reasons, NT has revised the date and said it would take another one and a half months to launch the service.
"We have almost completed testing the quality of the service," Rajendra Nakarmi, a senior NT official told myrepublica.com. "We are now fine tuning the network so that customers don´t have to face problem once the service is introduced."
EVDO is a service which offers wireless internet service at a speed of up to 2.4mbps. NT´s wireless internet service currently available in the market offers data transfer speed of up to 253kbps only. This service, which operates on PDSN (Packet Data Serving Node) technology, can be accessed using 1x USB modems or PCMCIA cards.
In order to use the new service, tariff of which has not been fixed yet, customers will have to get an advanced version of USB modem or PCMCIA card. "The ones the customers are currently using will not support the new service," Nakarmi said. However, to make things easier for the customers NT is planning to distribute the devices that support the new service itself. "We are working on issuing a public tender notice to procure modems and PCMCIA cards," Nakarmi said.
The new wireless internet service of NT will initially be launched in Kathmandu, Pokhara and Banepa. "We have installed 13 base transceiver stations in Kathmandu and one each in Pokhara and Banepa," Nakarmi said. This, according to him, is enough to distribute around 25,000 lines.
However, NT has clarified introduction of the new service in the three cities does not mean that customers will not be able to browse the internet from other places in the country. "They can access internet service from everywhere but the data transfer speed in places other than Kathmandu, Pokhara and Banepa will be less," Nakarmi said.
This is because NT has not installed BTSs that support EVDO service throughout the country. Thus, in places where EVDO services are not available, NT´s system will automatically switch the user to the other network that operates on PDSN technology. This means that in places other than Kathmandu, Pokhara and Banepa customers will get a data transfer speed of only 253kbps.
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