By Our Reporter
With Nepal Electricity Authority appealing to the service providers to come to an agreement with it with the record of the amount of cables each company is using to provide internet, telephone and television, the pole rent row between the NEA and the service providers ended.
Issuing a statement on Sunday, the state-owned electricity monopoly said that it was always ready to resolve any grievances regarding the use of the structure through dialogue.
However, it said that regardless of the structure of the state, every citizen and service provider have a mandatory obligation to submit revenue as specified but some service providers have been using our structure for the past five years without paying any rent and charging customers.
Expressing concerns to the comments on the implementation of the new rental charge on the use of utility poles as recommended by a government committee a couple of years ago, NEA said that the cables were cut in a symbolic way.
“Some service providers have been using the utility poles without signing an agreement with the NEA, some have not renewed the agreement by submitting the GPS coordinated maps and documents telling the distance and hesitated to pay the new rental charges,” read the statement.
Companies including Nepal Telecom, Ncell, CG Net, Dish Home, Fiber World Communication have signed agreements with the NEA and paid the rent as per the increased rates.
NEA had revised its Optical Fibre Cable Service Operation Directives to implement new rental rates in 2018 July but had formed a committee to recommend the charges in December next year.
The committee was coordinated by a joint secretary of the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology, and comprising chairman of Nepal Telecommunication Authority, joint secretary of the Ministry of Energy, managing director of Nepal Telecom and deputy executive director of the NTA had suggested revising the rental charges.
In response, the NEA had reviewed the fees and decided to implement new rates from August 2020.
According to it, service providers did not respond to the multiple calls of the NEA to pay the rental charges as recommended by the government committee, prompting the NEA to remove the cables symbolically.
Login to add a comment