The number of telephone users in the country rose to 9.34 million on 14 August this year, up from 8.93 million a month ago, according to figures from the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA).
The mobile operators ended the period with 8.03 million subscribers, up from 7.65 million a month earlier. Of the total, 7.21 million were GSM users, up from 6.90 million a month earlier, and the remainder use Nepal Telecom’s CDMA service, called Sky Phone.
Nepal Telecom led in GSM subscribers with a customer base of 4.02 million, followed by Spice Nepal (Ncell) with 3.19 million. Nepal Telecom further ended the period with 4,099 3G subscribers, similar to the previous month. The number of fixed telephony users in Nepal stood at 838,026, up from 833,265 in mid-July.
Of the total, 591,609 were PSTN users and 246,417 were WLL users. Nepal Telecom had 585,700 PSTN users, followed by STM Telecom Sanchar with 4,841 customers, Nepal Satellite Telecom with 584 customers, and Smart with 484 PSTN customers.
Nepal Telecom ended the period with 176,870 WLL users and United Telecom had 69,547 subscribers.
Furthermore, there were 1.76 million internet users at 14 August, up from 1.36 million internet users a month earlier, and the penetration rate stood at 6.29 percent. Some 1.54 million people connect to the internet using GPRS, followed by 101,406 internet users that connect through CDMA 1X.
Some 48,106 people use ADSL to connect to the internet, and there were also 32,500 cable internet users and 27,265 dial-up users. Furthermore, 13,000 internet users connect through wireless or fibre optic technologies.
