Broadband for the future

Anjana Samarasinghe

Voice Calls will not be the mainstream revenue generator for the telecommunication industry, President of TNI Dr. Zoran Miljanic said at the first South Asia Broadband Communication Congress and Expo, which commenced yesterday.

‘Broadband connectivity gives power to the people. Broadband infrastructure in the emerging regions dramatically changes,’ he said.

Chief Marketing Officer, Head of Data Networking and IP Services Sri Lanka Telecom SLT Priyantha Perera said the voice revenue is going down and the non voice market is growing rapidly in the industry.

SLT Data and IP revenue has grown by 79 per cent and non-voice services such as ADSL have shown strong growth.

SLT has also noticed a large number of pre paid Internet card users than the post-paid internet users. There is a 114,000 customer base for the prepaid segment and postpaid customers account for 42,000.

Using prepaid Internet is more economical for the customers than postpaid, he said.

Professor of the Department of Electrical Engineering Indian Institute of Technology Chennai, India Dr. Ashok

 Jhunjhunwala said India needs 100 million broadband connections by 2015.

Affordability is the key in telecommunication industry and the challenge is to provide services at an affordable price for the consumers.

Executive Director of LIRNEasia Dr. Rohan Samarajiva said the Government must engage in command and control regulation for the industry and regulations should enhance the competitive environment.

‘Publicising national comparative tariffs and service quality levels gives better results than command and control. It is important to have regional benchmarks to measure the quality of the service,’ Prof. Samarajiva said.

However there should be an improved data collection system for setting regional benchmarks, he said.

Posts and Telecommunications Minister Rauf Hakeem said the local telecommunication industry contributes 23 per cent for the GDP. Availability of Broadband connectivity in the country will accelerate the economic growth of the country.

Appropriate regulatory policies needs to be implemented for development of the broadband connectivity in the country. The Government and the TRC have to play an important role in its implementation, he said.