November 2: Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) has installed optical fibre along 1,013 kilometres across the country under the Optical Fiber Backbone Network Expansion Project. 

The NTA had initiated the project in 2016 with a goal of expanding the optical fibre network within two years, but only 46.53 per cent of work has been completed till October 17, the state-owned national news agency RSS reported citing the project officials.

According to RSS, the NTA has mobilized the Rural Telecommunications Development Fund to expand the broadband internet service across the country. The NTA had decided to utilize the fund on June 13, 2016 to make the broadband internet service accessible in community schools, campuses, health posts, agriculture centres, tourism centres, all the wards and public places.    

The NTA further said that the Mid-hill Highway and district headquarters are being connected to internet facility under the information superhighway project.  The NTA had given the responsibility to install fibre along 6,235 kilometres of the Mid-Hill Highway to three separate companies dividing the project into three packages.    

Under the first package, works have been launched in Province 1, Province 2 and Bagmati Province by forging agreement with Nepal Telecom. As per the agreement, the NT has to install fibre along 2,083 kilometres in three provinces but it has laid the fibre only along 1,013 kilometres in five years. In August, the overall progress was 46.16 percent with the completion of laying the fibre along 1,006-km length. The progress over the next one and a half months was the extension of the fibre in just 7 kilometers.   

NTA had signed an agreement with Nepal Telecom on September 28, 2012, in order to lay the fibre from eastern Nepal to Gorkha within two years under the first package.

Meanwhile, installation of optical fibre in 21 districts of Gandaki and Lumbini provinces under the second package has not started yet. The expansion work has been halted after a case was filed at the Supreme Court against the project, RSS stated.