It’s not only our friend Deepak who is experiencing bitter taste of mobile. Everyone is Kathmandu is willing to carry a mobile and this overwhelming interest is being wrongly cashed.
What’s your mobile number?
….
What? You don’t have a mobile?
That’s what you will hear if you don’t have a mobile phone with you – there is no way you can explain that you are at the office 8 hours a day and at home the remaining hours.
So, if you live in Kathmandu city and wants to ‘show off’ that you keep a little importance in the city, you need a mobile with you. There are many things you can do with your mobile: read some saucy jokes on SMS, receive and listen to ringtones and if had nothing to do just can enjoy a few minutes playing games, and moreover when you carry one you become all-well-known to talk about it at teastalls.
Everybody wants mobile here – its a trend. But how much can the Nepal Telecom can provide? They need upgrading of infrastructure and everything else to support the lines they have already sold – but not doing this. Why? Simple, because there is no competitor.
A few months ago, a friend of mine gave me his UTL CDMA mobile to test. That worked nicely – but that mobile has’t yet appeared in public because there is a Supreme Court hearing on it. NT don’t want any competition and we are suffering.
The government has just licenced another mobile company but I wonder when they will bring out and I suspect when they will be ready, there will be another writ at the Supreme Court. A talk with a senior NT official a few months ago enlightened me on what they want. They want to capture all the market first (no problem if they don’t have infrastructure to support it) and then only let other to start selling.
I don’t know when my mobile will no longer say ‘Network Busy – Retry?’ or I won’t hear ‘Sorry, The number you have dialled can’t be reached, please try again later’. And when wife won’t say that she tried a dozen times before I answered her.
