Will slog to be better, says NT
Amid rising criticism for low service quality, Nepal Telecom has said it will now focus on improving services to retain existing users and attract new ones to its service network. The state-owned company has drawn flak for poor service quality, while it is also losing market shares with competition from the private sector getting tough.
“There is a need to improve the services and carry out an expansion drive to sustain in the competitive market,” said Amar Nath Singh, the managing director of Nepal Telecom. He said offering better quality services has become a must to win the hearts of the customers for future expansion and survival.
The NT is planning to expand the solar energy-powered Base Transcriber Stations (BTS), which receives signals and transfers them to receivers, to address problems it faces due to the power crisis. Singh also said that the company will add batteries for power back-up to address the crisis.
NT is gradually losing its market share with private telecom operators who have come up with aggressive marketing strategies. As of mid-December last year, the company has 7.26 million subscribers, including 5.64 million in the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) mobile segment, the main telecom service.
According to Singh, since the penetration rate has crossed the 55 percent mark, the company will now need around 7.5 million subscribers to make it 100 percent.
“Competition can also lead telecom operators to bankruptcy in the long run; as such, we will be moving ahead carefully,” Singh said.
The Nepal Telecommunications Authority’s statistics show that the NT’s market share declined to 48 percent in mid-December last year. In the same period in 2010, the company had a market share of 55 percent in the total user base of 10.64 million in the country. The NT also plans a massive expansion drive by introducing new packages under which additional 10 million GSM lines will be added. For the purpose, tender has already been invited and NT said it will complete evaluation of the tenders within one week.
The mega GSM project is based on two technologies—GSM and Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS), also known as the third generation (3G) mobile telecommunications technology. The project is aimed at meeting the demand for 2G, 3G and 4G mobile services for the next four years, according to the NT.
Of the 10 million lines, 5.2 million GSM/UMTS lines are for the Central, Eastern, Far-Western and Mid-Western development regions. Likewise, the remaining 4.8 million lines are targeted at new subscribers of the Kathmandu valley and the Western Development Region. Singh said the company has kept the project of 10 million lines in its priority list. “New lines under this project will be distributed after 9-12 months,” he said.
Meanwhile, the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee (PAC) on Thursday directed the NT to use alternative energy in its BTS to improve service quality. It has also directed the company to make its tender procedures transparent.
The committee summoned Singh and Secretary of the Ministry of Information and Communications, Abhanindra Kumar Shrestha, who is also the NT’s chairman, to discuss alternative power sources for the company.
Posted on: 2012-02-10 10:40
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