The Parliamentary Development Committee on Thursday directed Nepal Telecom (NT) to adjust telephone tariff as per the need of time.

The committee also directed the state-owned telecom service provider to upgrade service quality and increase its capacity keeping in mind the business outlook for 20 years. “People have a lot of expectations from the state-backed NT,” the committee said. “It should meet the people’s aspirations.”

The committee directed the NT to use the latest technologies, provide multiple services, make customer service centre more effective, increase the number of Base Transceiver Station (BTS) towers, provide reliable and high capacity solar backup at BTS towers and adopt efficient service mechanism round the clock.

NT is currently working on installing 77 BTS towers in Kathmandu and has been redesigning its network to ensure better service quality, said NT Managing Director Buddhi Prasad Acharya.

The parliamentary committee also directed the telecom giant to adopt the LTE (4G) technology, increase the capacity of Back Bone Transmission Network and Bandwith and expand the EVDO and Wimax services.

To keep up the pace with the latest technologies, NT has also been asked to phase out the PSTN technology in land lines and adopt the NGN technology.

Before phasing out the CDMA technology, the NT has been asked to converge the CDMA customers into GSM and expand the coverage of the GSM network.

Similarly, the committee has directed the Ministry of Information and Communication to increase internet connectivity at community-based primary schools, medical institutions and Village Development Committees (VDCs) by partnering with the NT. “Money under the RTDF can be utilised for this purpose,” said the committee.

Terming the Public Procurement Act (PPA) “problematic” and “time consuming”, the committee asked the government to reassess the Act. “It takes a lot of time for importing devices due to the difficulties in the tendering process. Technology is evolving at a lightning speed. Our Acts and polices should not hinder imports of the latest technology.”