Minister Orders Fast Restoration of 130 Downed Nepal Telecom Sites

Minister for Information and Communications Dr Bikram Timilsina instructed Nepal Telecom on Tuesday to urgently reactivate telecom infrastructure crippled by recent floods and landslides, as 130 transmission sites remain offline across the country.

The directive came during a high-level briefing at the Ministry of Information and Communications in Singha Durbar. According to Gorkhapatra and Onlinekhabar, the meeting included Ministry Secretary Rajendra Prasad Paudel, Nepal Telecom Managing Director Sangita Pahadi (Aryal), and Chief Operating Officer Prem Prasad Silwal, who reviewed recovery progress and logistical bottlenecks.

Timilsina warned that continuing blackouts hinder humanitarian interventions alongside ordinary civilian communications. As reported by The Rising Nepal, the minister stressed that severed connectivity undermines disaster-response coordination among security forces, local administrators, and aid agencies working in inundated settlements. He ordered the state-owned telecom provider to bypass grid failures with interim options, including backup generator systems, wherever the national transmission line cannot be quickly reconnected.

During the briefing, COO Silwal explained that power outages were the primary cause of transmission loss across the network. Severe road damage and landslips have blocked repair crews and heavy replacement machinery from reaching remote base stations. Both Newspolar and Gorkhapatra reported Silwal as stating that in several inaccessible mountainous settlements, Nepal Telecom will have to charter helicopters to airlift technical personnel, portable power generators, and spare transmission hardware.

Out of 1,132 telephone towers knocked out of service across Nepal, technical crews have restored 1,002 sites to date, leaving 130 towers inactive, according to carrier records cited across the reporting outlets.

Data compiled by Nepal Telecom shows that Myagdi remains the hardest-hit district with 24 towers still down, followed by Rolpa with 19, Manang and Pyuthan with 15 each, and Baglung with 13. In addition, 11 towers remain non-functional in Palpa, nine in Gulmi, seven in Arghakhanchi, six in Dang, four in Mustang, and three in Parbat. Smaller numbers of outages also persist in Kapilvastu, Nawalparasi, Gorkha, Lamjung, Rupandehi, and Syangja.

The floods and landslides behind the outages struck between Asoj 8 and 11 (September 24–27), Gorkhapatra, Newspolar and Onlinekhabar reported.

Nepal Telecom stated that field teams are deploying to the remaining damaged installations on a priority basis to bring mobile voice and data services back online.