Nepal Telecom's 5G trial programme seems to be on an obstacle course, hitting one hurdle after another. The state-owned telecom giant says the 5G testing will be delayed by another few months after having held up trials of the new mobile network technology for a year.

“The testing plan has been delayed as the equipment needed to conduct the 5G trials arrived late,” said Shobhan Adhikari, spokesperson for Nepal Telecom. “It took us time to issue the purchase order.”

The purchase order for the equipment has been completed, Adhikari said, and the process to perform the trials will begin within one and a half months.

Nepal Telecom will conduct the trials in one location each in the seven provinces.

Initially, the government company had planned to begin the trials in mid-July 2021, aiming to become the first in South Asia to roll out the 5G network, but changes in government slowed it down.

Nepal Telecom remained headless for three months starting in January. The government appointed Sunil Poudel as managing director on April 8.

Nepal Telecom received the spectrum allotment and trial permission from the regulator on November 22, 2021, and it started working on the 5G trial preparation by forming a task force in mid-December the same year.

The telecom regulator has allocated 2600 MHz frequency band to Nepal Telecom for the testing.

India has conducted 5G trials and is moving to launch commercial operations.

According to a recent media report, India's 5G spectrum auction is scheduled to start on July 26. The Indian government aims to see 5G networks covering at least 20 towns and cities across the country by the end of 2022.

“As India is in the process of launching 5G, it would be helpful for us to learn from their experience technically and economically,” Adhikari said.

Service providers say that 3G customers are shifting to 4G due to the ecosystem of 4G LTE and supporting devices.

Government bodies make several inside deals and projects always get mired in controversies, industry insiders say. The start of the 5G trials is no exception.

Santosh Sigdel, founder chairman of Digital Rights Nepal, an advocacy group to strengthen civic space and digital rights, said the delay in the introduction and adaptation of technology impacts access to consumers, and information and technology development.

Andy Chong, CEO and managing director of Ncell, said at a recent event that if Ncell had been given approval for 5G trials, the task would already have been completed.

In September 2021, Ncell wrote to the Nepal Telecommunications Authority seeking approval for 5G network trials. The regulator replied that the Radio Frequency Policy Determination Committee would review Ncell’s 5G plan. There has been no response so far, sources privy to the matter said.

Sigdel said that information, communication and technology development in Nepal became vibrant mainly due to a liberal market. “And if 5G trials had been done in the same way, or the private sector had been brought on board, 5G would already have been launched,” Sigdel said.

“We have been requesting the regulator to issue trial 5G spectrum to Ncell since early last year so that we could test the technology for a stipulated period before the commercial launch as per the regulatory framework,” Ncell told the Post in an email.

“It is equally important to see if the technology has commercial value for both the market and business as 4G is yet to be exploited fully. New technology will require investment, and operators need business propositions that will deliver a return on their investment.

“There has been encouraging progress in the digital economy supported by eased access to connectivity and it was, not surprisingly, accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. However, a level playing field, timely amendment to existing laws and policies for taxation, equipment imports, spectrum allocation and digital literacy among others play a vital role when it comes to the introduction of modern technology and taking the country to higher levels of digital development,” Ncell said.

In the past too, Ncell received approval for 4G six months after Nepal Telecom obtained permission from the authority.

According to the latest management and information system report of the Nepal Telecommunications Authority, there are 38 million broadband subscribers in Nepal.

The country has 10 million 3G subscribers and 17.99 million 4G subscribers. Total broadband penetration has reached 130.20 percent, out of which 98.55 are mobile broadband users and 31.28 percent fixed broadband users.

As of mid-May, Nepal Telecom had 8.89 million 3G users and 10 million 4G users while Ncell had 2 million 3G users and 6.61 million 4G users.

The fifth-generation or 5G technology standard for cellular broadband networks offers faster connections, higher throughput and more capacity than 4G, and will benefit areas of high traffic such as public places.