Wednesday, 6 October Nepal banking and financial infrastructures, we can country. In particular, the incumbent operator that has around 92% stake of the government has reached all 75- districts and all 3,915 Village Development Committees (i.e. the lowest levels of the administrative machinery), and has installed more than 75 base stations of GSM & CDMA mobile services that operate through Satellite backhaul technology. These satellite-backhaul based BTSs are in the remotest locations of the country includ-ing expect that the under-developed countries like Nepal will be able to exhibit the extent of unimaginable and innovative benefit of “mobile-broadband-internet” services in very near future. Mr. Chairman The names of the entities like ITU, APT, The World Bank, ADB, JICA, FINNIDA, DANIDA and many others are in-scribed some areas that lie at the other side of the Himalayan range towards the Tibetan Plateau of China. The demand for telecommunications services, and in particular mobile services and the internet services, even in remotest parts of the country with very low per capita income, clearly indicates the need for accelerat-ing in the history of telecommunications develop-ment in the country. I would like to take this opportu-nity to mention here that we are, indeed, indebted to their kind assistance and support, and look forward to closer relationship with them in the days to come. process of bridging digital divide. The government has realized this necessity and has formulated plans and programs accordingly. The potential of ICT in improving education, health, governance and overall quality of life can hardly be un-der- Finally Let me emphasize that this is the age of technology, age of communication and age of knowledge engi-neering. estimated. It is a universal phenomenon that ICT An effective regional collaboration can be is getting converged, and that it is likely to gain fur-ther achieved by sharing of knowledge, experiences and resources among the member countries. Developing and implementing open standards for networks, appli-cations momentum in the days to come. ICT convergence brings with it the beauty of fixed telephony, mobile services, broadband internet services and television/ video into hand-held communication devices. Next Generation Network (NGN) in some form is already present in the country, and will be expanded in near future. 3G GSM services has already been introduced and slowly gaining popularity mainly with the young-er generation. The operators are already eyeing on the 4G technology from the point of view of availability in the market and justification from investment per-spectives. and services help achieve interoperability and fair competition. Harmonization of convergence poli-cies, formulation of ICT investment promotion policies, information security and combating cyber crime, ICT capacity building etc. require regional cooperation. ITU and its structure have capability to play the role of cat-alyst for realizing these requirements, and Nepal has good faith and trust in its activities. The year 2013 is expected to see the overall teledensity of over 54% in the country, and remarkable achievement in the proliferation of services that de-pend I wish you all happiness and success. Thank you. on broadband internet services. The proliferation of “mobile-broadband-internet” serv-ices will, no doubt, bring in revolution to the way peo-ple live and work. In order to overcome disadvantages of poor transportation networks and presence of insuf-ficient 137