The presence of disparate policy initiatives and institutional arrangements for the development of ICT sector in Nepal however also points towards lack of coherent strategy in line with the technological trends that have been shaping up the sector over the years. Rapid take-up of Internet and mobile wireless communications has been some of the key trends shaping the ICT landscape. These trends have come attendant with policy implications of varied nature. For example, the Internet has truly become mainstream with predominant use of social media, making it relevant for so many people in their daily lives. Security concerns and concerns about privacy, personal saftey and intellectual property rights have accompanied such technological changes. In addition, as indicated earlier, the wider take-up and convergence of ICTs also raises new regulatory issues that traditionally would be seen as separate from telecommunications policy and regulation. In such a rapidly evolving field, it is necessary to ensure that policy and regulation adapt to new developments.

The existence of a number of insititutional arrangements with overlapping mandates and spheres of influnece surrounding the ICT sector in Nepal has resulted in project execution difficulties and hampered smooth rollout of ICT projects.6

Given the current state of telecommunications and information technology sector, Nepal needs to enhance its overall readiness for effectively harnessing these technologies by articulating its policy positions on new technologies like Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), Internet Protocal Television (IPTV), new forms of social networking, etc.

This policy is formulated basically in response to the felt need for realigning the underpinning substance of existing ICT related policy and regulatory regime with the ramifications of ever- intensifying technological innovation. Among others, transformation from circuit-based telecommunication networks to packet-based ones using the Internet protocol (IP) has brought about digital convergence and offered a host of challenges and opportunities from policy perspectives.

It has been observed that the lack of a coherent policy position befitting the technological dynamism that has charecterized the ICT landscape has offered many challenges for the holistic development of the ICT sector. The current state of policy incongruence has hindered, for example, the growth of IT and IT enabled services sector to the detriment of economic growth prospects that this sector could open up. Similarly, government transformation prospects anchored in potentialities offered by ICTs have not gained traction on account of lack of a coherent policy framework grounded on latest development in the sector.

It is precisely along those lines that this policy stresses the need for a well-defined and consistent policy and regulatory framework for addressing converged regime of telecommunications, broadcasting, and ICT.