KATHMANDU, April 6 - Spice Nepal, the operator of Mero Mobile, will invest US$ 250 million in the next two years to provide better coverage and services to Nepali consumers, the company announced Sunday.
"Our aim is to be the number one mobile operator in Nepal," said Lars Nyberg, president and chief executive officer of TeliaSonera, the Finnish-Swedish telecommunications company which holds an 80 percent controlling stake in Spice Nepal. "We want to provide the best network quality to Nepali consumers."
He said that TeliaSonera was in for the long haul in Nepal, but ruled out entering the fixed line sector.
"There will be three things that we will concentrate on -- quality of service, customer service and competitive pricing," said Nyberg, addressing a press conference on Sunday.
Asked why Mero Mobile's tariff was still higher than Nepal Telecom's, the leaders in Nepal, Nyberg said that prices will come down, but it will maybe take a year or so.
"We do not want to be perceived as being more expensive," he said. "We know how to run services at a lower cost."
Dropped calls, getting cut off during a phone conversation and power outages are of special concern in the case of Nepal, he said.
TeliaSonera, which has operations in 20 Nordic and Baltic countries besides central Asia and Cambodia in Southeast Asia, acquired a controlling stake in Spice Nepal last year.
It will invest US$ 120 million in 2009 and US$ 130 in 2010, Dilip Singh, chief executive officer of Spice Nepal, said.
"There is only 60 percent mobile penetration in Nepal now, and there is no reason why this cannot be 100 percent," Nyberg said. According to Singh, the company wants to provide services to 1.2 million more consumers in 2009 in addition to its existing 1.7 million subscribers.
"Securing a connection at the first attempt and hearing a clear voice from the other end is important," Singh said.
He added that telecommunications was vital for a country's development, and by providing better services, Mero Mobile, TeliaSonera's subsidiary in Nepal, was contributing to Nepal's progress.
Singh said that the company had been in talks with the Nepal Telecommunications Authority's proposal for refarming frequencies because it was a complicated and expensive process and such refarming would affect consumers.
Spice Nepal was in touch with the government at every level including reducing the inter-connection tariff, sing told the media.
