KHATMANDU – Nepal ended India’s monopoly on internet access on Friday byopening a new optical fibre link across the Himalayan mountains to China,Hindustan Times has reported.
Nepal’s information and communication minister Mohan Bahadur Basnet andChinese ambassador Yu Hong inaugurated the link during a ceremony inKathmandu, reflecting China’s growing engagement in a region seen asIndia’s backyard.Till Friday, landlocked Nepal was totally dependent on India for access tothe worldwide web through connections at Biratnagar, Bhairahawa andBirgunj, for which it pays a substantial sum as fees and royalties. Besidesstate-run Indian firms, Nepal has been acquiring bandwidth from privateplayers such as Tata and Airtel and BSNL
Nepal Telecom (NT), the government-owned telecom service provider, has nowacquired bandwidth from China Telecom Global Limited, with its head officein Hong Kong. NT signed an agreement with the Chinese company in December2016 to acquire bandwidth.
The Chinese optical fibre link enters Nepal at Rasuwa, 175 km north of thecapital Kathmandu. A successful test of the link was conducted last weekbefore it became operational on Friday.
“This will add new dynamics to Nepal-China ties,” Basnet said whileinaugurating the facility. He noted that infrastructure had also beencreated to extend the Chinese railway network to Nepal.
Ambassador Yu said China is the second largest investor in Nepal and alsosend many tourists to the country.
Kamini Rajbhandari, the general manager of NT, said, “Nepal’s internetdependency on India has ended from today and we are able to diversify ourbusiness.”
Nepal’s has a 25-GBPS link with India while the Chinese link is 1.5 GBPS,comparatively slower than the Indian connection.
“We are connected with China at only one point now, which can be increasedin the future,” said Rajbhandari.
The cost of internet services will remain the same, officials said. NTspokesperson Prativa Baidhya declined to disclose details of the fees paidby Nepal to the Indian side or the new deal with China.
A report issued in October by the Nepal Telecommunications Authority, theregulator for the telecom sector, showed more than 61% of the country’spopulation of more than 26 million is connected to the internet, mostlythrough mobile devices.
More than 6,500 new users are connected to the internet every day, thereport said. A majority of people used the services of Nepal Telecom butits market share fell to 52.02% in the last fiscal, compared to 55.15% inthe previous fiscal.
The internet was first introduced to Nepal in 1993 by a venture between theRoyal Nepal Academy of Science and Technology (RONAST) and a private firm,the Mercantile Office Systems. The Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbaihad a UNDP-funded internet connection and RONAST set up a system whereby itcould connect to Mumbai to transfer email messages. The first optical fibrelink to India was built four years later.
Service providers have said data use in Nepal has been increasingconstantly with more people using social media platforms such as Facebookand Twitter and communication platforms such as Viber, Messenger, WhatsAppand WeChat, especially to communicate with family members abroad.
Nepal is largely dependent on India for economic, trade and transitactivities. It was only in August 2016, after a prolonged blockade of theborder with India, that Nepal forged a trade and transit treaty with Chinaduring the tenure of former premier KP Sharma Oli and imported fuel fromthe northern neighbour for the first time.