06 November 2008

STM Sanchar Brings Telephone, Other Services to Rural Nepal

Rural pay phones evolving into full-service telecommunication centers

STM Telecom Sanchar brings telephone service to 500 rural villages in Nepal.

By Howard Cincotta
Special Correspondent

Washington — Any company bringing telephones to rural Nepal copes with one of the most isolated and rugged regions of the world — and learns how to maneuver through an equally difficult political environment, according to Abhinav Puri, chief executive of STM Telecom Sanchar.

Over the past five years, however, STM Sanchar has succeeded in overcoming daunting logistical and political hurdles to bring communications to parts of Nepal where villagers previously had to travel for days to place a telephone call or photocopy  a document.

And the company has done more — installing a communications infrastructure that is providing information, health and education services through broadband connections.

“STM is a company committed not only to being a profitable and successful business, but also to making a profound contribution to the communities in which it operates,”

said the U.S. Embassy in Kathmandu in nominating the company for the secretary of state's 2008 Award for Corporate Excellence.

MOUNTAINS AND PARTNERSHIPS

STM Sanchar's path to success was hardly guaranteed; the first company to win the bid to provide rural telephone service dropped out after seeing the formidable landscape.

“It was damn tough to get into those rural areas at first,” said STM Sanchar’s Puri. Before Nepal's historic election of a Constituent Assembly in 2008, he said, “the country was going through one of the bloodiest conflicts in its history in which more than 10,000 lives were lost in the last eight years.”  (See “Maoist Rule in Nepal Marks Potential Turning Point for Group.”)

Meeting the contract's initial milestones proved extremely challenging, Puri said, since the effort began in the most mountainous, isolated region of eastern Nepal, where travel was often by foot or helicopter.  The entire project of installing two pay phones in each of hundreds of designated villages had to be completed in 18 months.

The army worried the telephones would be used by the rebels, while many villagers were convinced they would be monitored by the government, according to Puri.

Puri said the company overcame obstacles by initiating partnerships as well as through the power of pent-up demand for public telephone service.  “We received excellent support throughout from the Nepalese Telecommunications Authority and the World Bank,” Puri said.

Workers transport satellite phone equipment that was designed for ease of transportation to hard-to-access areas.

STM stressed to customers that these were truly public phones that didn't differentiate among political views, Puri said.

The company also gave each village a gentle ultimatum: “Decide if you want the phone service and can agree on how to manage it — or we’ll move on and install it somewhere else.”

At one point, the army temporarily shut down the project out of security concerns, Puri said, and there were tough negotiations to permit interconnectivity with the government's own telecommunications system.

In the end, Puri said, “It was a classic case of actual demand — the sheer momentum of people wanting the service — that allowed us to keep going and overcome these obstacles.”

At the conclusion of the initial contract, STM Sanchar had provided 534 designated villages with basic telephone service.

Today, STM's network comprises more than 700 villages and a rural population of approximately 1.5 million. About 65 percent of these satellite-linked phones are solar powered.

Puri anticipates having 26,000 rural subscribers and 300 additional villages by June 2009.

TELECENTERS AND HEALTH CENTERS

In 2007, the Nepalese Telecommunications Authority authorized STM Sanchar to expand from eastern to western Nepal. STM has also begun building a state-of-the-art network that can provide a wide range of communications services, including international long distance, wireless, Internet access, and health and education programs, to Nepal's rural communities.

One of the most exciting new developments, according to Puri, is how villages are establishing telecenters that typically consist of several computers with broadband connections to the Internet, along with fax machines, scanners and digital photo services.

They resemble small cybercafes, and despite their modest size, these facilities can have an enormous impact on quality of life.

“Part of our vision is that the telecenter can become a health center,” Puri said. The health centers would have up to three beds for patients and be staffed by a certified medical worker who can provide basic health checks, dispense medicines and arrange for digital video links to a physician who can determine if a patient should be transferred to a hospital.

“It is a life-saving mechanism for these villages which are totally isolated, having no electricity and road access,” he said.

For more information, see the Web sites of the Award for Corporate Excellence and STM Sanchar.