Towers or New Services ; what are Nepalese Telecom operators up to?

Nepalese mobile phone users are always at angry face with their operators. Even though the operators claim that their service is satisfactory- but this satisfaction does not really satisfies the customers. The telecom operators are busy expanding their customer volume rather than the customer service and network towers/signals.

At present there are 6 Telecom service providers in Nepal – including all traditional landlines to mobile telephony services- the following list is of Nepalese mobile operators (yes, telecom operators):

1. Nepal Telecom (NTC) – 49,90,190 users
2. Ncell (former Mero Mobile) – 22,70,328 users
3. United Telecom Limited (UTL) – 3,50,963 users
4. Smart Telecom (operating in Hilly Region 398 VDCs)
5. Nepal Satellite (Far/Western Nepal 273 VDCs)
6. STM (operating in East Nepal 534 VDCs)

Data true as of April 5, 2010, this is the latest mobile user data/demographics in Nepal.
According to Nepal Telecommunication Authority (NTA):
Total Nepalese Mobile phone users : 65,12,130
GSM based users: 58,91,866
CDMA based users: 6,20,264
The net mobile teledensity in Nepal : 23.68 %
PSTN landline phones reach: 3% of total Nepalese population
The Telecom Facts: Nepalese telecom operators are not yet serious about their service. Even though they claim that their mobile service is according to international standards – customers yet find many network problems, no tower, weak signal, no data transmission, failure in SMS sending, unavailable networks and others. For a proof, each mobile user (mass people) can be asked about.
We all know about NTC, the government owned mobile operator company, is never able to provide true connectivity and people have left querying about – because NTC never listens (refer to our user comments.) Though Ncell (former Mero Mobile, Spice Nepal) says they don’t bargain in the quality, I, myself, am having problems using their data services (EDGE) and phone calls as well. UTL is not yet in the game, their unlimited data plan is like few Mbps net per day.
While our mobile operators are not yet successful and serious about the customer’s satisfaction they are trying to introduce newer technologies to the telecom industry. NGN (Next Generation Network), IP CDMA (Internet Protocol based CDMA), WiMAX are some of the latest technologies that are to be penetrated in Nepal soon.
Are the mobile operators trying to bury all the shortcomings of their present operation by introducing the newer technologies? We are yet to see.
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