Indian monopoly of 25 years in the Nepali internet market has come to an end on Friday with the government owned Nepal Telecom (NT) commercially buying bandwidth from Chinese network company China Telecom Global starting today.
NT will bring the connection through optical fibers brought from China by land via Rasuwa. NT and the Chinese company had signed a commercial agreement about bringing internet connection by land on December 6, 2016. NT had signed the agreement to buy at a competitive rate and also to end dependence on a single country.
NT Spokesperson Pratibha Vaidya said trial transmission of bandwidth has already been done and it will be brought commercially from today. NT has laid optical fibers over 90 kilometers from Galchhi of Dhading till Rasuwagadi to bring Chinese internet.
NT officials have been clarifying that NT will not be buying a large volume from China, and adding that it will buy on the basis of necessity.
The Chinese internet will be connected to the central system through the NT network and will reach all the consumers. NT is currently buying over 2200 GB of bandwidth from different telecom companies of India.
Nepali consumers, however, will not feel any difference immediately despite start of commercial import from China.
The main benefit of connection to China is that Nepal can now be connected to service providers of other countries through China, and companies from other countries can also compete in the bidding process when NT wants to buy bandwidth in the future allowing NT to buy at a cheaper rate than it is currently buying from India.
