Broad Highway

Nov 01, 2007 (LBO) – Dialog Broadband Networks, a unit of Dialog Telekom launched broadband services offering high download speeds at competitive prices which can potentially take-over the corporate leased line market for internet, officials said. The firm uses Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax) to offer download speeds of up to 4Megabits per second for a monthly fee of 13,000 rupees and a connection fee of 5000 rupees.

It cheapest package is priced at 4000 rupees a month with a download speed of 1Mbps and an upload speed of 256 Mbps.

Sri Lankan firms now pay as much as 200,000 rupees a month for fixed leased line access.

"We see a demand for the product and we are offering it, but at this stage I would not like to set specific targets," Dialog chief Hans Wijayasuriya said.

Wijayasuriya said the group now had a suit of products to make Information Communications Technology affordable to Sri Lankans ranging from mobile phones to fixed access and broadband services.

Sri Lanka's Telecom Regulator Kanchana Ratwatte says Sri Lanka now had 7 million mobile users, and 2.2 million fixed access users.

"By the end of the year we will have 10 million voice users, which is 50 percent of the population," Rat