TikTok and Facebook Pull Out of Nepal Over Policy Instability

Kathmandu: TikTok, shaken by the nine-month ban, has backed out of its plan to set up cache and Content Delivery Network (CDN) servers in Nepal. Officials from Nepal Telecom and WorldLink have confirmed that the impact of the ban imposed a year ago is still being felt.

“TikTok has clearly said it cannot provide local cache in Nepal. They have been refusing to provide us with cache servers, citing instability in government policy,” Nepal Telecom senior engineer Rabin Kasula told TechPana.

The then Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’-led government banned TikTok on 13 November 2023, citing its negative impact on social harmony and the social environment. Nine months later, on 22 August, 2024, the government lifted the ban.

But despite the decision, Kasula said TikTok has yet to add local cache servers. “TikTok’s international traffic has now reached 40 to 50 Gbps in Telecom. However, we have not been able to manage it locally. Because of the previous ban, we are still paying huge amounts to bandwidth suppliers,” he said.

Before the ban, more than 80 Gbps of TikTok traffic was served through local cache. After the shutdown, it dropped to 10 Gbps, as the cache server also handled traffic for other platforms.

However, users turned to VPNs and third-party DNS services (Cloudflare, Google, etc.) to access TikTok. This routed traffic through international links, pushing up bandwidth consumption. Although TikTok was technically blocked at the DNS level, VPNs made the restriction ineffective, forcing ISPs to bear higher international bandwidth costs.

Samit Jan, Chairman of the Network Operators Group and Group CTO of WorldLink, said TikTok had been providing free cache servers to ISPs before the ban. But after the ban, it stopped sending servers. According to him, TikTok had two types of cache servers in Nepal, its own and those operated through CDN provider Akamai.

“Now both TikTok and Akamai have stopped sending servers to Nepal. They used to invest millions of dollars in bringing such infrastructure here. But they no longer want to risk investment given the fear that the Nepal government could suddenly change policy and shut them down,” Jan told TechPana.

“They are still in a wait-and-see mode. It has been a year since TikTok was shut down, yet they haven’t provided infrastructure to telecom operators or ISPs. TikTok’s traffic is still coming through international routes,” he added.

Currently, 400 to 500 Gbps of TikTok traffic enters Nepal through international bandwidth. If cache servers had been set up, Jan said, it would have saved a huge amount of bandwidth and millions of dollars in costs. “But TikTok is not ready for that,” he added.

Meanwhile, traffic from companies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and others has also been rising. Jan said they had been in talks to build infrastructure in Nepal by 2025, as dependence on social media continues to grow. “But after the government repeatedly issued notices about shutting down social media, they have started hesitating. Such bans discourage global companies from investing,” he said.

According to him, Facebook had finalized plans to build infrastructure in Nepal in 2026. But the company pulled out after the government announced that unlisted platforms could face bans. “This risks setting back Nepal’s digital ecosystem rather than helping it,” Jan warned.

 

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