WiMAX in Nepal finally a reality – Nepal Telecom launches WiMAX
It was back in March 2010, Nepal Telecommunication Authority (NTA) wrote to Ministry of Communications and Information (MoIC) on behalf of Nepal Telecom (NT) for the operation request of Wireless Broadband Internet – WiMax in the Nepalese sky. Looks, like that dream of NT is going real. Nepal Telecom has been testing WiMax inside the ringroad of Kathmandu Valley now. NT officials has informally signaled that Nepal Telecom WiMax is scheduled for launch this Dashain/Tihar (November 2012).
It has been known that NT has already tested 10 WiMax base stations (BS) in the Valley and going to install 40 more BS to expand the WiMax coverage in Kathmandu. The WiMax solutions has been provided by c, a US-based vendor for 4G Technology, WiMax Mobile broadband and LTE. Nepal Telecom had selected Airspan for countrywide 4G Coverage in Nepal only in last February 22, 2012.
TechSansar had already reported that the basic coverage of WiMax Microwave Line of Sight Communication is around the radius of 50 KM from the service provider’s wave transmitting station (BS) which is enough distance to cover the whole of Kathmandu valley. However, for the dense urban city Kathmandu the safest operating radius of WiMax is around 10KM. However, Nepal Telecom (NT) and Airspan designed the WiMax architect in such a way that a single BS can provide coverage of upto only 1KM with the least speed of 4Mbps. Expect even lesser bandwidth speed in compact and narrower city dwellings.
Nepal Telecom WiMax project has expected the completion of 50 BS within November, and other 400 more Wi-Fi hotspots which will be monitored by NTA and approved the same for the tariff. The current proposal says, for the volume based package of 5GB WiMax Broadband Internet service in Kathmandu costs approx NRs 800. This cost of WiMax service is just preliminary, and we can expect more packages for domestic, corporate and businesses soon after they the service. The competition of NT Wimax with WiFi providers in Nepal will ameliorate soon.
NT will be outsourcing the Customer Premises Equipments (CPE) and WiMax support services to another 3rd party company, so the customers can expect a better service than it would be directly with NT.
While many city dwellers think that WiMAX is going to be in their reach, and other countryman (outside of the valley – who are always neglected in first round of technology deployment by NT), they would not raise the voice that this WiMAX was initially proposed for rural networking. The increasing demand of Broadband in Nepal has been a matter of concern even for ITU (International Telecom Union) that’s why they provided their helping hands for broadband in Nepal, but the projects are snailing in paper based records in Authority houses.
For right now, Telecom has calculated that about 1500 hotspots for WiMAX BS will suffice the need of bandwidth in whole of the country. They should better cover the remote areas of Nepal with high Internet speed fast so that unnecessary works of cabling would be eliminated. This Wireless broadband service if comes along with telephony backend service (Nepal Telecom & Airspan both haven’t expressed any concern over the telephony service via WiMAX in Nepal yet) would be a real praise for rural and remote villages. This will make 100% of the telephone and broadband internet penetration in Nepal.
We aren’t going to debate over WiMAX technology in Nepal against the Worldwide leading LTE, are we? (Read this) – or are we foreseeing WiMAX will be ignored after a year of deployment as NTC is doing with 3G EVDO and IP-CDMA Projects currently? Let’s get smart here.
Great news, let’s hope NTC will focus in service this time,
wow..hope the gov will provide spectrum for lte also soon..
@disqus_zMYuQE8bqB:disqus hope so but what is even funnier is they said this spectrum is licensed only to NTC, and where are private ISP supposed to be hailing from?
Yaha services ra lines badayera matrai k garney. Too little local content and international bandwidth ta tehi ho.
This is for you people who are considering buying WiMax.
I was the 61st customer to buy a One Year WiMAX contract this week from NTC and four gentleman and one driver came to my house here in Lele to install WiMAX. They had a hard time getting a good signal but after a few phone calls to the head office (using NCELL?) a signal magically appeared from the NTC tower and they proceeded to install the WiMAX equipment and connect it to my computer proclaiming that it worked. I told them directly that in our area the NTC cell tower had been pretty much off for the last month and they acknowledged that they couldn’t connect using NTC service. So,,,,, they left. The connection was good, very fast, ~2Mbps, for about 6 hours then just stopped. That was three days ago. This is supposed to be an “always on” connection based on usage. I have received no phone calls from them to check on the connection and my satisfaction, and I can’t reach them either (NTC’s tower is down again). They have said that in the beginning they would be focused on their early “corporate” customers and even after opening up WiMAX to the general population their focus would be on corporate customers. Doesn’t look like to me.
Using my slow but always reliable UTL CDMA connection I have sent many emails to NTC about my situation but I received no response. So, it looks like they got my 40,000 Rs and I get a microwave receiver and no service. This is exactly the same issue with NCELL. It’s equally as useless and after a year of waiting and a few trips to New Baneshwor nothing has changed. They just won’t admit that their system doesn’t work. Even their EDGE network won’t work here. Signal is strong but always disconnects. What’s odd about NCELL is that they had a strong 3G service for one week in our area and it was very reliable, then the signal was gone and it never came back. When I went to enquire about why, they said they were testing in our area. So, NCELL has the equipment on the tower but haven’t turned it on?! How strange.
Well, I have been using UTL CDMA internet for four years now and it is almost always on. I would say it’s off about four or five days a year because of load shedding and battery drain. That’ pretty good for 6,000 Rs a year unlimited use.
I would like to hear what you all think about this. If you have any recommendations for me.
when is ntc going to launch wimax in dharan??????
[…] step from the Nepal Government, however many business starters still lack the knowledge of Internet which could lead many middleman make the process more hassle. OCR should advertise themselves and […]
[…] Ncell is also thought to be expensive when it comes to GPRS Service. On the same board, there is NTC to compete on market. NTC also has its 3G service activated on the major cities of Nepal and in compared with Ncell, the […]
[…] the most important fact being one time agreement no liabilities or whatsoever. While Nepal’s internal businesses are still finding hard to develop in trust factor with vendors, Nepal is already on the top list of […]
[…] Okay, still wondering what WiMAX is, read a full detail on Nepal Telecom WiMAX Broadband Wireless Service – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), and get to know how Nepal Telecom struggled to launch WiMAX connection in Nepal. […]
[…] WiMAX in Nepal finally a reality – Nepal Telecom launches WiMAX […]