Although Nepal´s largest telecom company is not stellar in terms of quality of service, it was able to make this achievement largely due to loyal following for its mobile phone services.
This growth in the number of subscribers has pushed up NT´s telephone penetration rate to 13.28 percent from last fiscal year´s 10.12 percent. This, in turn, propelled country´s teledensity rate to 20.45 percent, meaning, of every 100 people, 20 now have access to telephone services.
NT´s success comes on the back of large number of mobile lines distributed this fiscal year. In the first eight months, NT, Nepal´s largest telecom company, distributed 705,469 additional GSM mobile phone lines, pushing up the number of NT´s GSM cell phone subscribers to 2.42 million. It also distributed 206,016 additional CDMA phone lines in the first eight months. NT has plans of distributing two million additional GSM phone lines and 462,000 CDMA lines within this fiscal year.
"In the next two years people can see more people using mobile phone service even in the rural areas," Amar Nath Singh, chief of NT told journalists at a press meet organized in Kathmandu on Thursday. "We are also actively pursuing the task of installing VSATs to operate mobile phone services in remote places." This year NT expanded its services in 171 village development committees of the country. NT´s services are now available in 3,264 VDCs of the country.
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