KATHMANDU, April 9: The ban on the social networking site TikTok in Nepal has started taking toll on telecom companies operating in Nepal, resulting in a loss of revenue amounting to Rs 3 billion for both NTC and Ncell.
Within just five months since the government implemented the ban on TikTok on November 13, the revenue of telecom service providers has significantly decreased.
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Ncell, in particular, faced a loss of about Rs 1.5 billion due to reduced bandwidth consumption after Tiktok's ban as mentioned by Vishal Upadhyaya, chief regulatory and legal officer of Ncell. Similarly, the state-owned Nepal Telecom (NTC) also experienced a decline in revenue similar in proportional to that of Ncell.
Madhusudan Dahal, senior engineer of NTC , informed that the number of data users of NTC is about 10 percent less than Ncell’s, resulting in revenue losses of over Rs 1.3 billion due to TikTok ban.
The impact of reduced data consumption post-TikTok ban has affected the income of telecom companies according to Dahal. Both Ncell and NTC, being similar service providers, have faced impact on income due to regulatory measures and government policy.
Meanwhile, the Internet Service Providers Association of Nepal (ISPAN) stated that the growth rate of internet consumption in the country over the last four months has been stable following the government's decision to ban TikTok.
