Nepal Telecom to install 500 more towers

Nepal Telecom (NT) has stated that it will install 500 additional Base Transcriber Station (BTS)s within the next three months. With the installation of these BTSs, NT has targeted to take its services to rural areas, semi-urban areas and to improve the service quality.

The state-owned telecom service operator currently has around 1,800 BTSs across the country for its GSM mobile service. GSM mobile is also the segment in which it is facing stiff competition from private operators.

“New BTSs will be targeted at improving as well as taking our service to rural areas and areas in the process of urbanisation,” said Surendra Prasad Thike, deputy managing director and spokesperson for NT. He said they are continuously working on network expansion plan.

With the increasing competition, NT has already decided to add 6 million 3G enabled GSM lines. For the purpose, it will also require a huge investment for infrastructure development. By the end of the next fiscal year, according to NT, it will have more than 4,000 BTSs. Preparations are underway to call global tenders for the new lines, said NT. To add such a huge number of subscribers, NT requires at least 2,000 new BTSs. Thike said NT requires a huge investment for setting up BTSs, they are working on infrastructure sharing with other operators apart from carrying out expansion work. “After the infra sharing, the more operators share BTSs, the more the operating costs come down,” said Thike. He added that there won’t be a need of extra investment for same infrastructure if all mobile operators agree to telecom infrastructure sharing.

Infrastructure sharing means sharing of towers, BTSs, microwave radio equipment, optical fibbers, antennas and generators, among others. There are six telecom operators in the country and they are currently expanding services through their individual investment.

Subscribers of telecom service, particularly GSM mobile, are increasing rapidly. Total number of GSM subscribers has already surpassed 10 million. However, the number of BTSs has not increased accordingly.

As per the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA), growing call traffic, limited bandwidth and a limited number of BTSs have contributed to poor network coverage of most operators. One way to solve this problem would be setting up of more towers. There is a need of an estimated 10,000 additional BTSs for providing quality service in the country. Currently, there are over 3,000 BTSs in the country. An official at the NTA said the government is working to implement the provision of infrastructure sharing from the next year. “This will bring investment cost down and operators will have a chance to concentrate on quality,” said the official  (source : ekantipur)

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