Category: Technology

WELLINGTON, Sept 26, 2007 (AFP) – The New Zealand government on Wednesday ordered the country’s dominant phone company Telecom to split into three units in a bid to level the playing field in the telecommunications industry.But investors took the latest news in their stride, with shares rising six cents at 4.36 New Zealand dollars by […]

Sept 25, 2007 (LBO) – Mobile users in Sri Lanka would pay a new 10 percent tax on call charges from today, a senior treasury official said Tuesday. The tax bill authorizing the increase was signed into law by the Speaker of Sri Lanka’s parliament, yesterday, he said. The official said the government hopes to […]

Sept 24, 2007 (LBO) – International Finance Corporation, the private sector financing arm of the World Bank inked a 100 million financing deal Monday with Sri Lanka’s biggest mobile phone operator, Dialog Telekom.Washington-based IFC will lend 70 million dollars in debt, while the balance will be used to buy shares from Dialog’s parent company, Telekom […]

NEW DELHI, Sept 22, 2007 (AFP) – The number of Indian mobile phone subscribers has passed the 200 million mark after the country added another eight million customers last month, industry figures show. India’s wireless market, the world’s fastest growing, attracted a further 8.31 million wireless subscribers in August to touch 201.29 million users, according […]

Sept 19, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lankan fixed wireless operator Suntel, a unit of Sweden’s Telia, has said net profit for the first half ending June 2007 was up seven percent to 311 million rupees. Revenue rose to 3.6 billion rupees from 3.3 billion rupees in the first half of 2006 In a statement accompanying […]

Sept 18, 2007 (LBO) – Bharti Airtel Lanka, a unit of India’s Bharti Airtel Tuesday announced a 150 million dollar alliance with China’s Huawei Technologies Co. to build and manage its mobile network. “We’d like to share infrastructure with other operators. We’d like to maximise the terms of sharing. We believe sharing is the way […]

Sept 16, 2007 (AFP) – Home to some 1.5 billion people, South Asia is paying a high price to access the Internet as service providers have been slow to deliver cheaper broadband connections, analysts say. The region has embraced telephones, mobile phones and computers and India has a flourishing software and outsourcing industry, noted industry […]

Sept 15, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka is on track to complete computer networking of 200 government offices, the state information technology agency said. The Lanka Government Network project hopes to connect 325 ministries, departments, provincial councils, district and divisional secretariats by the year-end the ICT agency said. The ICTA has also developed High-level Information […]

Sept 12, 2007 (LBO) – A service to channel doctors via mobile phones has won an international technology and customer service award, the ICT firms that run it in Sri Lanka said. EChannelling a listed company that started a web-based medical appointment service and Sri Lanka’s largest celco, Dialog Telekom had won the Innovative Technology […]

Sept 11, 2007 (LBO) – Bhart Airtel has appointed Olof Haag, a former Ericsson executive, as the country head for Sri Lanka, the company said Tuesday. Haag would be the Chairman of Bharti Airtel Lanka (Pvt) Ltd, Sri Lanka’s fifth mobile operator which is due to start operations early in 2008. “I am confident that […]

Sept 06, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lankan mobile operator Mobitel has launched two international roaming services for customers travelling overseas. One service is the loyalty programme for in-bound international roaming customers, launched in collaboration with Travelling Connect, a global provider of loyalty management services to the telecommunication industry. A statement by Mobitel, a subsidiary of […]

Sept 06, 2007 (LBO) – Massachusetts-based Virtusa Corp., an IT services firm with operations in Sri Lanka that raised 57 million dollars from a NASDAQ listing last month, said its first quarter profit fell slightly. “The company’s effective tax rate increased from 3.6 percent in the first quarter of fiscal 2007 to 20.4 percent in […]