Investment good

Ads

Communications in Sri Lanka

Telephones

Main lines in use: 1,094,809 Est(2003)

Mobile cellular in use: 7.2 million Est (2007)

Telephone system

Very inadequate domestic service, particularly in rural areas; some hope for improvement with privatization of national telephone company and encouragement to private investment; good international service (1999)

Domestic

The national trunk network consists mostly of digital microwave radio relay; fiber-optic links are now in use in the Colombo area and two fixed wireless local loops have been installed. Competition is strong in mobile cellular systems but the teledensity rate remains as low as 16.6 phone lines per 100 persons (2004).

Although the reported phone line teledensity is 16.6 (2004) fixed phone line teledensity remains as low as 5.1, where cellular teledensity is 11.4. Reflected Cellular phone teledensity is misleading because some people have more than one phone. Therefore true teledensity remains at a very low figure.

International

Submarine cables to Indonesia and Djibouti; satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat (Indian Ocean) (1999)

Broadband Internet access

ADSL was introduced to Sri Lanka in 2003 by provider Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT).

The average speed is 512/128 kbit/s, costing Rs. 2500+VAT per month for an unmetered flat rate. This is the standard for SLT and resellers. Faster connections up to 2 Mbit/s are available, but the price is considerably higher (Rs. 6500 for 2 Mbit/s). In peak hours there are lot of complaints from customers that they are not able to achieve these speeds. The service is available within the Greater Colombo area, Kandy, Galle and is currently being extended. Recently Sri Lanka Telecom has introduced a new plan where one can transfer up to 1GB of data per month for Rs. 1000/- (US$ 10 approx.) at speeds of 512kb upload /128kb download. Each additional block of 250Mb is billed at Rs. 250/-.