E-Kantipur

KATHMANDU, DEC 04 -

The Nepal Telecommun-ications Authority (NTA) has again asked United Telecom Limited (UTL) to clear its royalty dues at the earliest. The NTA’s latest move has come after the Appellate Committee under the Ministry of Information and Communications (MoIC) rejected UTL’s appeal to annul the NTA’s claim of royalty dues.

“The NTA on Wednesday wrote to UTL to clear the committed royalty of around Rs 950 million based on the verdict of the committee,” said Dipesh Acharya, deputy director of the NTA. The committee on Sept 16 had scrapped UTL’s plea saying that there was “no valid logic”. The NTA has also informed the Ministry of Finance and the Inland Revenue Department about the order issued to UTL.

UTL, the country’s first private sector telecom operator, has balked at paying the dues citing losses amid stiff competition in the local telecom market. When asked about the recent move of the NTA regarding the royalty, UTL CEO Arun Gupta said, “No comment for now.”

UTL has committed royalty dues of Rs 952.16 million including Rs 56.16 million for limited mobility and data services as of the fiscal year 2009-10. The outstanding amount will go up further by mid-January 2012 if the company does not clear its dues soon, according to the NTA. Acharya said that the NTA would again write to UTL with strict directions if the company does not respond to the regulator’s call soon. Earlier in March this year, the NTA had told UTL to clear its royalty dues along with a warning that it could lose its service operating license.

The NTA had granted a license for operating basic telecom service based on CDMA technology in October 2002. Four years later in 2006, the company was granted a license for limited mobility service in the Kathmandu valley. UTL has around 0.6 million subscribers including internet service customers as of Q1 of the current fiscal year, according to the NTA.

Two months ago at a meeting of the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC), UTL had requested the government to renegotiate the royalty dues. The committed royalty fee of telecom service operators has been a much talked about issue for a long time. A sub-committee under PAC has been studying the issues of spectrum allocation, committed royalty fee, illegal VOIP calls and license renewal changes for the last 10 months, and it is likely to submit its report to a full committee soon.

The NTA’s row over the committed royalty is not limited to UTL. For a long time, the regulator has unsolved disputes with two major telecom operators, Nepal Telecom (NT) and Ncell, regarding the committed royalty and license renewal fees. The NTA said that it had not been able to take action against the operators as the issue of royalty has been under consideration by the Supreme Court for the last four years.

Posted on: 2011-12-04 09:51

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