Telecommunication, Media and Technology Law

Bhandari Law, your legal partner, brings together lawyers with real, sustained experience across the telecommunication, media, and technology sector in Nepal — a space that moves faster than most areas of law and rewards lawyers who actually keep pace with it rather than treating it as a periodic side matter.

 

Our work spans telecom, broadcasting, entertainment, fintech, data protection and privacy, e-commerce, online gaming, artificial intelligence, health tech, digital mapping, and drones and robotics. We advise telecom network operators and service providers, cable and satellite network operators, broadcasters, film and television studios and producers, software and hardware technology companies, outsourcing companies, and e-commerce businesses operating in Nepal and abroad.

 

The Legal Framework

Telecommunications in Nepal runs through the Telecommunications Act, 2053 (1997), which requires any operator of a telecommunications service to hold a license from the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) — the body that sets licensing terms, approves service charges, and regulates the sector. Licenses are issued for defined terms (historically up to 25 years with renewal periods), and the licensing regime itself has been evolving, with recent reform drafts moving toward unified licensing structures that simplify what used to require separate licenses for cellular, internet, and other individual services.

 

Broadcasting sits under its own statute, the National Broadcasting Act, 2049 (1993), which governs radio and television broadcasting licenses separately from telecom licensing. Technology and e-commerce matters draw on the Electronic Transactions Act, 2063 (2008), which covers digital signatures, electronic records, and cybercrime provisions, while data protection and privacy questions increasingly engage Nepal's privacy legislation and sector-specific directives — an area that's been tightening as fintech, health tech, and e-commerce businesses handle more personal data at scale.

 

What makes this sector genuinely difficult to advise on isn't any single statute — it's that a single business (a fintech app, a streaming platform, an AI-driven health tool) can sit under three or four different regulatory regimes simultaneously, each administered by a different authority, and each capable of stalling a launch if overlooked.

 

What We Do

Regulatory advisory and licensing

 We advise on the licensing and regulatory approvals a business needs before it can operate — whether that's an NTA telecom license, a broadcasting license, or sector-specific approval for fintech, e-commerce, or data-driven services.

 

Transaction support

We advise on the commercial side of deals in this sector — mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures, technology licensing, and investment transactions — bringing together regulatory knowledge and deal experience so a transaction doesn't stall on a compliance issue no one flagged early.

 

Contracts and commercial documentation

We draft and negotiate the agreements this sector runs on — service agreements, distribution and content licensing agreements, technology transfer agreements, and data processing arrangements.

 

Regulatory engagement

We work directly with industry regulators, government bodies, and policymakers on behalf of clients, which gives us a genuine, current understanding of where the regulatory environment is heading, not just where it currently stands.

Dispute resolution. We represent clients in disputes before the courts and arbitration tribunals, covering contractual disputes, regulatory disagreements, and licensing conflicts that arise in this sector.

 

Who We Represent

We've advised telecom network operators and service providers, cable and satellite network operators, broadcasters, film and television studios and producers, software and hardware technology companies, outsourcing companies, and e-commerce companies operating both in Nepal and internationally. That range means we bring local regulatory knowledge together with an understanding of how international clients expect deals in this space to be structured, closing the gap between the two.

 

Meet our team of lawyers in Nepal.