More firms to get VOIP license

HIMALAYAN NEWS SERVICE

KATHMANDU: Nepal Telecom Authority (NTA), the regulatory body for the telecommunication sector, has said that it would provide license to more firms to operate Voice Over Internet Protocol (VOIP) services.

“We are mulling to issue license to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) if their service is expanded to at least 25 districts, covering 13 hundred Village Development Committees (VDCs),” said Bhesh Raj Kanel, NTA chairman.

According to him, NTA board had taken the decision in December and had forwarded the proposal to the Ministry of Information and Communication (MoIC). “NTA’s proposal has been approved by MoIC and is forwarded to the Ministry of Law and Justice (MoLJ) for final approval,” MoIC official said. “The decision will come into effect once MoLJ endorses it,” NTA chairman Kanel said.

NTA has licensed four telephone service providers — Nepal Telecom (NT), United Telecom Ltd (UTL), Spice Nepal and STM Telecom — to operate VOIP channel for incoming calls. Of them, NT has started VOIP for incoming calls through Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) phone.

Currently, NTA has provided the license to 21 ISPs so far and the ISPs have to pay Rs 3,00,000 to NTA to operate the service for five years.

“License to more companies will decrease the current trend of illegal VOIP call bypass,” according to Kanel. The operators are losing around Rs 160 million every month through illegal VOIP operation.

According to police sources, illegal VOIP channels are not only eating up huge amount of revenue but also posing serious threat to national security.

According to NTA, illegal VOIP channels account for calls worth two million minutes, resulting in massive loss of revenue.