Nepalese telco Ncell announced on Tuesday it has become the first – and so far only – company to be officially certified by the Department of Information Technology (DoIT) as a data centre and cloud service provider in Nepal.
The listing follows a directive from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology (MoCIT) in January 2025 to provide a legal foundation for regulating data centres and cloud services in Nepal.
According to the Data Centre and Cloud Services (Operation and Management) Directives 2025, all existing data centre and cloud service providers must obtain separate certifications from the DoIT (which operates under MoCIT) before the end of June 2025.
Ncell – which currently operates a Tier III integrated data centre in Nakkhu, Lalitpur, as well as two disaster recovery data centres in Pokhara and Hetauda – said it underwent a thorough inspection of its infrastructure to receive certification.
It was also required to submit documentation for things such as fire safety protocols, organizational security and privacy policies, business continuity plans, data centre tier classification, and IP pool details to confirm that it meets the required operational standards and security protocols to provide data centre and cloud services.
Ncell chief business officer Dion Asencio said Ncell is the first and only company to date to be certified with the DoIT under the directive.
“Given the growing market for data centres and cloud services, this certification holds significant importance,” he said in a statement.
Other data centre operators in Nepal include rival telco Subisu, Cloud Himalaya and DataHub.
In January 2025, Nepal Telecom signed a letter of intent with Huawei to build a data centre and a disaster recovery centre in a deal valued at NPR 484 million ($3.5m).
India’s Yotta Data Services is currently building a data centre near Kathmandu for BLC under a deal signed in April 2024.
