[Itpolicy-np] Internet Outage and ISPs support

[Pavan S Shakya]

DOES THE FLOOR THINK WE DID IT POLITICALLY ?

I am surprised that our move is compared to Gyanendra's move.

It is unfortunate that we must shut down our services to protest for basic 
human rights, as this is the only language that our government understands. 
We have avoided pressure from various groups in the past to shut down our 
services in protest. However, this time, the entire business community in 
Nepal is going on strike and they want us to shut down indefinitely. We 
were able to convince them of the basic necessity of telecommunications and 
get away with only couple of hours outage. We must show solidarity with the 
private sector's genuine demands.

With reference to the article from Vinaya Sir and with due respect, we have 
been saying that a pen is mightier than a sword. But, does the floor can 
guarantee that this proverb is applicable to our government and that too 
with twists and turns in political system and bureaucracy ? The only thing 
we can do WITH PEN is wait and watch. If the pen had been mightier in this 
country (Kantipur case is different and we all know), we would have been 
enjoying the full democratic system and mechanism, where a kamaiya from far 
western region would visit PM office without any hesitation.

In our case, for instance, we had always raised the issue of ISM band but 
had not it been a political pressure, we would not have enjoyed the free 
band today. Thanks to Mahabir Dai and Rajendra Poudelji and the entire 
team, who managed to get it through politically.

I hope you all agree that ISPs are the only service industry who have been 
very quiet and tolerating every commercial and bureaucratic pressures for 
social cause. We have been mute and always acted gentlemanly whenever we 
had problems and always sought amicable solutions through talks and paper 
works.

But for how long ?

An influential political leader was telling me bluntly that if we had taken 
the street during Jan Andolan II, our thup dastur issue and other problems 
would have been resolved within a minute. We all supported the movement in 
our capacity. The only thing we did not do was shutting down our services 
in protest and we did not go out on the street WITH BANNER. He was again 
blunt to say that they had waived off FM royalty simply because they helped 
in pro-democratic movement. If this is the attitude of the leader who is 
designing our bhabisya, we have to act as per his specification of 
contributing to the democracy.

Now, going back to the issue :

Let's not think individually. If barbaric situation is happening in the 
heart of capital city, how can we imagine peaceful Nepal. I am surprised to 
know that in six months, almost 50 people were kidnapped and such facts are 
surfacing NOW because people were not getting protection and they have been 
getting threatens. Now, these people feel secure when we joined hands and 
issues are coming up.

I do not think I should repeat the word "chanda atanka" here as you all are 
very well aware of it. If such trend continues, the only thing that surely 
will happen is that we shutdown our business and handover all clients to 
the "semi-government owned" companies and wait for its share to be floated 
to the public :(

We are very well aware of the ramification we will have in days to come but 
I am glad to share the news that most of our valued customers have 
supported our move. Well, handful thinks that if they have paid for 24 x 7 
x 365 days service, they should get it and I do not have answer for that 
except to convince them on our movement.

Please comment !

Pavan

At 09:38 PM 3/20/2007, Gaurab Raj Upadhaya wrote:
>Hi,
>
>On Tue, 20 Mar 2007, Prashant Manandhar wrote:
>
>>Dear all,
>>
>>This is the recall situations as feb 2006, i'm totally agreed with Kishor 
>>ji's Voice. As you all remembered that the Feb 2006 impacted on Internet 
>>business of our Local ISP, one of the example is all UN agencies 
>>installed their own VSAT network and all network directly connecting 
>>through International Provider, not going through local ISP's network.
>
>Also, as somone was saying on a different mailing list. Next time he will 
>go to buy from Nepal telecom.
>
>While i don't know how many common people will change providers over this, 
>all government agencies not already with NT will move to them.
>
>Would be interested to know what's NTA's take on this.
>
>thanks
>
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