Nepal Telecom, a telecommunications service provider, has officially canceled the controversial contract process for the purchase of a new billing system worth about 5 billion rupees. The company issued a notice on Sunday canceling the controversial contract process related to the convergent real-time billing and customer support system.

The transfer of Radhika Aryal, Secretary of the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, who is also the Board Chairperson of Telecom, and the cancellation of the contract process for Telecom's billing system have coincided. A notice issued by the Central Procurement Department of Nepal Telecom states that the bid called for supply, delivery, installation and operation has been canceled. The bid was published on March 18, 2025 through the Public Procurement System (e-GP).

According to the company, the contract process has been canceled as per the decision of 2 Magh 2082. The notice states that all interested and participating bidders have been informed about this. The company has not disclosed the reason for the contract cancellation in the public notice. However, Telecom spokesperson Rabindra Manandhar told Kantipur that such a step was taken due to uncomfortable news in the media and some weaknesses seen in the technical side. 

‘Although the ministry has investigated this and has not officially told us about it, the media has shown some weaknesses,’ said Manandhar, ‘Now a new tender will be issued only after analyzing those weaknesses and improving everything, which may take some time.’ There was criticism that there was collusion with the Chinese company Huawei in this contract and that the criteria were prepared to award the contract only to it. In this process, only two Chinese companies, Huawei and Whale Cloud, submitted proposals, and the telecom had deemed Huawei qualified in the technical evaluation. This raised questions that it had adopted a ‘vendor lock-in’ strategy to keep other world-class companies out of the competition.

Experts had been pointing out that the billing system, which is considered the heart of telecommunications services, should not be given to a single vendor since Huawei has been providing the telecom’s core network infrastructure. Even though the Supreme Court had issued a directive order that the telecom should not take the core network and billing system from the same supplier, the telecom ignored it and deemed Huawei qualified.

Telecom's billing system procurement process has long been surrounded by controversy, collusion, and irregularities. The billing system purchased from the Chinese company Asia Info in 2011 had become outdated over time, and service problems had begun to appear. Then, in July 2078, the board of directors made a policy decision to purchase a new system, but the process could not move forward.

After the appointment of a new managing director on 24 Chaitra 2078, the practice of extending the term of the old company began instead of introducing a new system. In the meantime, in Mangsir 2079, it was decided to enter into a maintenance agreement worth billions of rupees for 6 years with Asia Info. Telecom was accused of blocking competition and 'setting'. In this case, the Commission for the Investigation of Abuse of Authority

has filed a case against 18 people, including the current and former managing directors, claiming corruption in the maintenance of the billing system.