Nepal to Get Internet From China From Tomorrow

After a long wait, Nepal is finally getting bandwidth from China from tomorrow, reports The Himalayan Times.

Prativa Baidhya, spokesperson for Nepal Telecom (NT) said, “The process of acquiring internet bandwidth from China has been completed. The commercial operation of the Nepal-China optical fibre link will begin from Friday.”

NT however did not reveal the actual bandwidth to be received from China.

NT had made an agreement with China Telecom in December 2016 to get Internet bandwidth. Nepal was supposed to receive Internet from China from May last year but various delays like avalanches, unfavourable weather conditions and other reasons pushed the date back to almost a year.

By August, Nepal had laid the optical fibers from Kathmandu to Rasuwagadi (approximately 90 kilometers) to link with China Telecom and once both countries had laid fibres, testing phase began in September last year.

Currently, NT is purchasing only a limited volume of Internet from China. However, it is to increase the volume gradually in the coming days.

This will serve to meet the ever increasing Internet demand in Nepal. It will also end Nepal’s full dependency on India for Internet. Further, it will help service providers in Nepal to establish a bandwidth connection with other countries through China.

Moreover, this bandwidth is expected to increase the competition between the various Internet service providers in the country. This in turn will reduce Internet cost for consumers and boost the quality of Internet in the country.

Since the Chinese bandwidth is from Hongkong, users are unlikely to face any problems using Google and other sites.