Worldlink Communications, the biggest internet service provider in Nepal, has paid the Nepal Telecommunications Authority (NTA) Rs 2.15 billion to clear its outstanding dues related to royalty and Rural Telecommunications Development Fee (RTDF).

The internet service provider said on Friday, November 15, that Rs 1.38 billion was paid as royalty and Rs 762.39 million as RTDF.

Read: SC Scraps Writ Filed by Worldlink, Directs ISPs to Pay Royalty to Government

Earlier this year in May, the Supreme Court had scrapped writ petitions filed by the Worldlink Communications against the government’s decision to impose the charges, paving the way for the government to collect the revenue.

The government had been asking the ISPs to pay the two-tier tax by considering maintenance as a telecommunication service. But, for years, the government and the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) remained at odds over it and whether to pay a certain percentage of the fees collected by the ISPs to the Rural Telecommunication Development Fund and to the government as royalty.

Read: Royalty Dispute: ISPs to Request for Installment Facility to the Government

Worldlink has cleared its outstanding dues two weeks after the court published the full text of the decision.

Earlier this month, NTA officials had told NBA that the oustanding dues of ISPs related to royalty and RTDF totalled Rs 4 billion. 

To make the ISPs pay their dues, the government has suspended foreign currency recommendations for their international bandwidth payments over the past year. In May, Airtel, a major provider of internet bandwidth to Nepal, halted services due to unpaid fees from Nepali ISPs, leading to several instances of slow internet speeds across the country.