Current ICT Infrastructure of Nepal and NREN services Prashant Manandhar

1. Current ICT Infrastructure of Nepal and NREN services Prashant Manandhar Nepal Research & Education Network (NREN). Prime College, Tribhuwan University Healthcare and Medical Research Collaborations between the USA and South Asia Internet2 Spring Member Meeting,22 - 26 April 2007 Arlington, Virginia, USA.

2. Overview of Nepal • Area: 147,797 Sq. Km • Population in million: 27.05 • Rural Population: 75.5% • Key Economic Sectors: • Agriculture and Tourism • Literacy in English: 18% • Computer ownership per 100 inhabitants: 2.80 • Telephone lines per 100 inhabitants: 3.5 • Internet users per 100 inhabitants: 1.80 • National bandwidth capacity within the country: 1000:1000 Mbps • National average bandwidth at NPIX: 18~25 Mpbs • International bandwidth 100:55 Mbps

3. Human Resource Development in ICT

4. Present Status of ICTInternet Status • Start Leased Line Cable and Radio Modems ((19 Kbps-64Kbps) for Data in early 1995. • Start of ISDN and Wireless Internet Service – 2000 • Establishment of Nepal Internet Exchange (npIX) – 2002 • Start of Wireless broadband Service – 2003 • Start of Cable Internet Service – 2004 • Metro Ethernet to Home Internet – 2005 • Fiber Optics laid in National East-West Highway 2005 purposes for Data and Voice Telecom only, Gateway connection with BSNL, India, 2007. Next Phase to China. • Total Number of Internet Users – ~550,000, Number of ISPs – 26 • Number of Optical Fiber provider for cable TV- 5 • Number of Optical Fiber provider for Internet - 7 • Number of VSAT Network Service Providers – 8

5. Present Status of ICTICT Infrastructure and Services • Telephone Service Providers – 3(NTC, UTL,STM) • PSTN Fixed Line Telephones – 600000 • Mobile Phone Service Provider – 3 (NTC, Spice Nepal, UTL) • Mobile Phone Subscribers GSM & CDMA – 110000 • Data not upto-date, as all providers are rapidly expanding • Number of Fax Mail Service Providers – 6 • Number of Satellite Telephone Service Providers – 3 • Number of Radio Paging Service Providers – 3 • Number of Local Data Network Service Providers – 2 • Radio broadcast stations: SW 1,MW 6, FM 22, (Radios: 2,800,000, costs < $1). • Television broadcast stations: 5 (Televisions: ~ 1000,000)

6. Government Initiatives for ICT • Establishment of HLCIT: 2003 “High Level Commission Information Technology” - An apex body formed toprovide strategic direction and to help formulate appropriate policy responses for the development of ICT sector. • Cyber Law, yet to be complete • Standardization of Nepali Fonts • Establishment of Rural Tele-centers • VoIP licensing on the process

7. Establishment of NREN Nepal Research and Education Network (NREN) has been established on Feb 2006 as a facilitator to support for advanced research and education network through the means of Information and Communication Technology and as a knowledge centre to support good ICT initiatives and researcher in the country. This entity has been established as a non-profit network under the Prime College, affiliated to National Tribhuwan National University, collaboration with other Universities, Education Institutes, Research Institutions, National IX, National Telecom, Government and Non Government Organizations, Industry association, Interested Educationists and Individuals. www.nren.net.np. Using APAN network as a primary ICT infrastructure for advanced research. Providing ICT infrastructure to support development research and studies. Promoting and supporting APAN and its associated. Establishing connectivity for knowledge and information sharing carry out study and research on various subject matters by means of ICT.

8. ICT Infrastructure and Services Currently, our networks exist only in Capital city, we’re not connected yet to Global Research and education network. For Research and training Labs: Local Bandwidth: 2-10 Mbps, International Bandwidth 256Kbps • Routers: Cisco 1750 : 2 • Routers: Cisco 1700 Series : 20 • CISCO Catalyst 2950 Switch (24-port Fast Ethernet) : 8 • Servers • Linux and FreeBSD Server Systems: 2 • Windows 2003 Intranet Server : 1 • Workstations using Windows, Linux - 11 • Wireless Networking Experiment Center This lab is used for research, demonstration and testing of advanced networks and latest technologies by Local ISPs, NPIX and researchers. Application Development on Data and Voice Communications.

9. Current NREN Activity • Project Involvement and Research in various ICT fields as follow:. • The SIP phones to connect to different villages via the WI-FI devices and The monitoring and management system has been developed for each phone locations. The open source application has been use for this system. Implemented in Nepal Wireless Project. • E-learning for secondary higher education students at the villages in local language, Intranet Portal. • Telemedicine for Health Post in the villages and Video Conference for Telemedicine will be implement soon within the villages. • Hot Spot systems and its applications • Web GIS: A portal for GIS functionality as well as data distribution. • Mesh WI-FI implementation is under process. • All NREN members will be connecting through Optical Fibre very soon. • Computer technical Troubleshooting knowledgebase information system in local Nepali language for communities on developing process.

10. Current NREN Activity Web enabled video, audio and text communication. • To fulfill the communicating gap between the remote health polyclinics and health post. • Enables the users to share their ideas and knowledge. • Enables them to communicate form remote places. • Distance check-up of the patients can be achieved be the specialist. • Distance learning is possible. Components Used: • VLC (video LAN Client) plug-ins. • Active-X components. • SIP Application (xlite phone).

11. Current NREN Activity

12. Activity Coming Soon in NREN • Set up ICT infrastructure for connecting all national universities, institutions, research consortium and APAN members around world. • IPV6 implementation in all NREN members by July 2007, tunneling through local ISPs. • Local ISPs ready to provide unused local capacity for NREN Use at discounted rates to connect other cities.Specially, Helping by Nepal Telecom.

13. HealthNet Nepal • Health Information Networking in Nepal :Taking Care by one of the NREN board of Director • Dr. Mohan Raj Pradhan, CEO HealthNet Nepal, Teaching Hospital,TU. • On-line community is composed of many factors that influence its success and sustainability for Health Programs. • The factor visible is only tools and technology for Health.

14. HealthNet Nepal Social and cultural factors • For helping to interact with on-line community, HNN has taken into consideration the following factors: • Membership • Identity • Culture • Language • Attention

15. HealthNet Nepal Connectivity Medium • Depending upon types of users the connectivity medium consist of Fiber optics, wireless link through radio modem, and dial-up connection through E1-leased line. • In extending the connectivity medium collaboration is done with private partners. Initiative like this. • Serving Internet service to >5000 individuals dialup clients; Doctors, Nurses, Students • 5 hospitals,medical related research intuitions and Polyclinics. • Total Local Bandwidth 10Mbps, International Bandwidth 1Mbps

16. HealthNet Nepal Tools and Services • Classified into six categories: • Health Discussion Group • Health Resources • Journals • Databases • Training Materials • Software Packages

17. HealthNet Nepal Health Discussion Group • The cheapest and widely used tool is e-mail. • To archive old mails in web based format MHonArch software is used. • To reply mails an in-house program in combination with Perl and CGI is developed Health Resources • To make ease of use in using Internet provision is made by providing a collection of URLs related to health information. It is divided into three categories: • International Health Resources • WHO sites • Health Resources of Nepal • Journals

18. HealthNet Nepal Journals • The journals include list of journals freely accessible, institutional subscribed journals and journals published within Nepal • For uploading journals in full text GSDL software is used. • As GSDL has not facility of combining various field as per our need, so HNN has also developed software package with PHP as a front end and MySql as backend.

19. HealthNet Nepal Database • List of database is broadly divided into two categories: • International database and • Locally developed database Locally Developed Databse • Locally generated database is named as “Annotated Health Science Bibliography of Nepal” The coverage is 1950 to date. WWWISIS v3.0 is used for this purpose

20. HealthNet Nepal Training courses • To make ease of use of ICT and to eliminate the techno-phobia among health and information professionals the training courses such as the following are conducted: Statistical packages such as SPSS and Epi-Info, Digital Library, Use of PDAs in Medicine, Telemedicine and Hospital Information System

21. HealthNet Nepal Development of Software Package • The success of ICT in health sector depends only when ICT is used in day to day practice. In Nepal, there is a tendency of using pirated copy of software package. Various factors such as lowest GNP (US $200) and low computer literacy (13%) among health professionals. • These factors has led to develop software package as a shareware using open source software to the health community of Nepal. To date following software are developed: • Software package in Devnagari Script to be used in PDA for collecting data from field site • Telemedicine software based on store and forward principle

22. HealthNet Nepal • Successful implementation of IT and its sustainability depends upon a group of factors: • Networking • Access to locally generated and international information sources • Use of ICT in working condition to enhance efficiency of health professionals • Training courses.

23. Network of Nepal Telecom Present Optical Fiber Backbone Network of Nepal Telecom

24. Network of Nepal Telecom Present Optical Fiber Backbone: Route Length of East-West OF Network: Approx. 900 Km (Single Mode- 24 Core fibers, 3x40/33 mm HDPE ducts laid in parallel). Backbone capacity: STM-4 (252 E1). SDH Equipments (Siemens): 6xSTM-16, 19xSTM-4 & 54xSTM-1. Links 18 districts and 79 Exchanges Far Western Region section yet to be completed (approx. 350 Km)

25. Member NRENNepal Wireless Project • 1997 started in one village (Himanchal Higher Secondary School, Nangi village). • Introduced the Information technology to villagers, most of whom had never seen computers until a few years ago. Most of the villagers still have no idea as what the uses of the computers and Internet are. • Nangi village is located in north west of Nepal on the Annapurna and Dhaulagiri ranges of the Himalayas. Reaching Nangi usually requires two to three days of travelling from Nepal’s capital city, Kathmandu. From Kathmandu, it is a seven hour bus ride or 35 minute plane trip to Pokhara, the second largest city in Nepal. The elevation of Nangi village is about 2,260 m. (7,345 ft). • Target group is the people living in the remote villages of Nepal, where villagers have no means of modern communication means. 15 nodes and next 11 villages (from kathmandu 90KM) to be connect by June 2007.

26. Nepal Wireless Project

27. Thank you!prashant@prime.edu.npmanandhar_prashant@yahoo.com