Nepal, the subject of a nationwide blackout of Internet due to the dispute over Indian payments

Nepal faced nationwide internet outages as Indian service providers severed connections over unpaid dues, impacting millions. A payment dispute between Nepali firms and the government over taxes has led to the crisis.

The outages across the whole country of Nepal on Thursday affected millions of Nepalese as the country's service providers had a fee dispute with Indian service providers. Nepal ISPs have already warned that the problem may not be solved and that the disruption may continue.

The Internet Service Providers' Association of Nepal (ISPAN) confessed that a majority of their member firms have their connections blocked by the upstream partners in India due to the non-paid debt. Data from a Nepali internet outage monitor named NetBlocks showed that 18 Nepali providers had severe bandwidth restrictions or complete outages during the five-hour incident.

"ISPAN stopped its services after Indian counterparts started disconnecting communication and not paying," said ISPAN CEO Suvash Khadka. "The Internet service is irreplaceable and the government has to react quickly to it."

According to ISPAN, Nepali internet companies are in arrears to Indian vendors to the tune of Rs 3 billion ($22.5 million). Anyway, they have failed to pay the bills as the Government of Nepal will not give the money saying that the providers owe taxes which must be settled. This reminds us of the old era.

Internet service providers argue that, under the existing tax laws, they are exempt from certain taxes; the government has a different perspective. A year ago, the total number of internet subscribers in Nepal exceeded 10 million. Thus, the downtime led to many interferences in business and communication.

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"This injustice should not be allowed in the era of digitization. The government should handle this issue of payments as soon as possible to maintain an open internet for all Nepalis." - Hari Bahadur, the owner of a cybercafe in Kathmandu, whose business was affected by the blackout.

While the dialogue proceeds the citizens and businesses are demanding a quicker decision to interrupt the shutdowns that can disconnect Nepal from the world.