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Kathmandu Monday November 19, 2001 Marga 04, 2058.
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Internet, email costly outside
capital
Post Report
KATHMANDU, Nov 18 – Access to internet and
email, the most efficient means of global communication, outside the Kathmandu valley
still remains unaffordable to the majority of people, mainly due to low availability and
high charges of the services.
Private Internet Service Providers (ISPs) are
reluctant to expand their services outside the capital city citing high cost of
establishing offices and getting required bandwidth, while the state-run Nepal
Telecommunic-ations Corporation (NTC) has also not been able to provide the services to
the people outside the valley.
People of the major cities outside the capital
say the NTC should expand its service, which they think would make the service easily
available and bring down the fees being charged by private ISPs through competition.
After the NTC began providing Internet and email
services to the customers of the Kathmandu Valley, it greatly helped to lower the tariffs
of Internet and email in the capital, breaking the monopoly of the private sector.
Being the fastest means of mass communication
and with added advantage like Internet telephony, the attraction towards Internet is
growing among the potential users in the major cities outside the capital city, but
unfortunately very few users have access to these services. In addition, they pay more
than double the charges that users pay in Kathmandu.
General Secretary of Computer Association of
Nepal (CAN), Atma Ram Ghimire says that NTC should expand its internet and email services
to other major cities so that it would earn a good revenue and the potential users can
benefit from it.
Due to a lack of such facility outside the
valley, IT-enabled services like medical transcription and others are also confined to the
capital, forcing a lot of youngsters coming to Kathmandu.
Shyam Kumar Agrawal, CEO of World Link
Communications, a leading ISP, says they have to uplink the internet in Kathmandu with
others outside the valley through NTC’s lease line and purchasing a bandwidth of 64
kilobyte that costs more than Rs 300 thousand. That’s why the service is more
expensive there, he says.
Sudarshan Ranjitkar, a businessman from Pokhara,
says they are even ready to pay double charge for internet and email compared to that of
Kathmandu, but the fees are higher than that and the service is also not easily available.
Phewa Net, a branch office of Mercantile
Communications System, charges Rs 4000 annually for email service only and similar is the
rate of internet and other ISPs there.
According to our correspondent in Chitwan,
Mercantile Communications charges Rs 1,320 for a CD, which allows a user to use it for 10
hours.
Our correspondent in Nepalgunj says that World
Link charges Rs 3,000 monthly for unlimited Internet use. In Biratnagar, one has to pay Rs
1,200 for a CD that allows a user to use it for 10 hours, according to a user there.
However, the number of Internet and email users is still very low.
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