Nepal’s Teledensity Has Reached 141.8 Percent

Nepal’s telephone penetration (or teledensity) has reached 141.8% as of mid-December 2017. Teledensity measures the percentage of a country’s population with access to telephone services.

According to the latest Management Information System (MIS) report of Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA), subscription of voice telephone service (fixed, mobile and others) has reached 37.5 million in the country.

Big Picture:

• In the recent years, telephone service providers have been putting effort to expand their network, which has resulted in the increase in the telephone penetration density.
• Even though it is at 141.8%, it is not an exact data, as it is calculated based on the national census of 2011. According to 2011 national census, Nepal’s population is at 26.49 million.

By the numbers on the report:

• There is a total of 37.5 million subscribers of telephone services in Nepal.
• Among them, almost 3.6 million (135.5%) have subscribed to mobile phones, and only 860,013 (3.25%) are subscribers of fixed lines.
• Another 804,188 (3.04%) people have subscribed to other telephone services like Global Mobile Personal Communications by Satellite (GMPCS).
• Nepal Telecom (NT) has highest subscribers of 18.5 million, closely followed by Ncell with almost 16.5 million subscribers.
• Smart Telecom is at third position with 1.7 million subscribers and United Telecom Ltd (UTL) is at the fourth position with 526,873 telephone subscribers.
• Nepal Satellite Telecom is at fifth position with 328,538 subscribers and CG Communication is at the sixth position among the six telephone service providers of Nepal with 2,987 subscribers.

What they are saying:

• Min Prasad Aryal, a spokesperson for NTA, said that telecom companies have been aggressively expanding their telephone services in the recent years, which is responsible for increasing the country’s teledensity rapidly.
• “Though the increasing penetration rate of telephone services is a testimony that people’s access to telephone services is increasing, the concrete teledensity in the country is difficult to calculate as many customers have been using more than one SIM card of different telecom companies,” said Aryal.

Even though there are more telephone subscriptions in Nepal than the country’s population, it cannot be said with any certainty that a 100% of the citizens of Nepal have access to telephone services. It is owing to the fact that many customers use more than one SIM card and some have more than one fixed Public Switch Telephone Network (PSTN) line.