Category: Technology

August 30, 2007 (LBO) — The US Agency for International Development has teamed up with local and international partners to launch over a dozen of high speed Internet kiosks in far-flung towns outside the city of Colombo, officials said Thursday.The 700,000 dollar project is targeting 15 budding entrepreneurs who are willing to take the risk, […]

August 22, 2007 (LBO) – Hutchison Telecom’s Sri Lanka celco has doubled operating profits in the first half of 2007 and doubled subscribers in the past year, the global telecom giant said. Hutchison Telecom Lanka, the Sri Lankan mobile operations unit of Hutchison Telecom, has saw operating profits double to 31 million Hong Kong dollars […]

August 21, 2007 (LBO) – Indian telecom operator Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) is to increase charges on a submarine cable link with Sri Lanka Telecom that carries voice and data traffic between the two countries. It has also demanded the Indian government withdraw the new service tax and educational tax at 12.5 per cent […]

August 18, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT), the island’s only wireline operator, has reported 45 percent lower profits in the June quarter as it sliced 875 million rupees off revenue pending a court decision on a case filed by a consumer organization. SLT reported 560 million rupees of consolidated profits down from 1,000 […]

Aug 16, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s top celco Dialog Telekom said it was not worried by the entry of Indian mobile giant Bharti Airtel which is set to start commercial operations early next year. Dialog has also launched low cost insurance schemes. “We have operated in a very competitive market place alongside three competitors […]

August 15, 2007 (LBO) – Bharti Airtel was aiming to launch commercial operations in Sri Lanka early next year investing 200 million dollars in the island, the Indian telecom giant said Wednesday. About 60 percent of Sri Lanka’s mobile market is controlled by Dialog Telekom, a unit of Telekom Malaysia. The rest is shared between […]

August 10 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s Tea Board has successfully completed the pilot run of an automated export document processing system that can speed up operations and has invited all exporters to get online. The system, designed and implemented by eServices Lanka, allows tea exporters to submit export documents for approval electronically without having to […]

August 9, 2007 (LBO) – Standard and Poor’s (S&P) has upgraded the outlook on Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) from negative to stable while affirming its ‘B+’ foreign currency and ‘BB-‘ local currency rating. “The rating on SLT continues to reflect the long-term rating on the sovereign given its government ownership and its exposure to domestic […]

Aug 08, 2007 (LBO) – A Sri Lankan ICT project using a digital, interactive educational content system in the Sinhala language aimed at developing self-learning capacity among rural students has won an international award. The ‘Shilpa Sayura’ project was awarded the Information for Development (i4d) award at the recent eINDIA 2007 Conference in New Delhi, […]

August 07, 2007 (LBO) – Sri Lanka’s top celco Dialog Telekom, a unit of Telecom Malaysia, said Tuesday it had launched a third generation (3G) international video calling service. “The convergence of the internet with mobile communication technologies has created limitless possibilities, and the 3G growth potential in Sri Lanka is immense,” Dialog’s head of […]

August 06, 2007 (LBO) – A Sri Lankan mobile phone operator has called for the introduction of ‘number portability’, saying that consumers would benefit from being able to switch networks while using the same number. Suren Amarasekera, chief executive of Mobitel Private Ltd., the cellular subsidiary of the dominant fixed phone operator Sri Lanka Telecom, […]

August 2, 2007 (LBO) – A Sri Lankan celco is rolling out a mobile payphone system for rural communities that have limited access to telecommunications facilities, but it is a market worth billions of rupees, officials said. Sri Lanka has over six million mobile phone users, serviced by four operators. Contrary to popular perceptions that […]