Expansion drive further motivated

Service providers to tap telecom potential in NE:

Sanjeevi Jayasuriya

In keeping with the Government’s accelerated development program in the North and the East, telecom service providers are keen to tap the potential in the telecommunication industry.

“Dialog Telekom is steadfastly committed to support the Government in its aggressive program of infrastructure development in the recently liberated areas in the northern and the eastern provinces. We have expanded our services in many parts of the North and the East with a total investment to-date exceeding US $ 30 million,” group chief executive Dialog Telekom PLC Dr. Hans Wijayasuriya said.

“Dialog is currently the largest ICT infrastructure investor in this region. The company’s first investment in the region dates back seven years with the first GSM call from the Jaffna peninsula being made in June 2002. Following this beachhead investment in the region’s telecommunication infrastructure we expanded our services,” he said.

“Our investment drive derives inspiration and motivation from the Government’s sincere commitment to deliver peace and normalcy to the citizens of the North and the East. We believe that forward looking investments in the ICT infrastructure would lead to the acceleration of citizen and community empowerment. Accordingly, Dialog is committed to extend the expansive reach of its state-of-the-art mobile, broadband and fixed lines (CDMA) services to the newly liberated areas,” he said.

The expansion drive has been further motivated by the support, felicitation and encouragement extended by the Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka, the Minister of Defence and other agencies. Spurred by further investment from its principal shareholder, Axiata Group BhD, Dialog’s development plans are focused on rapid expansion of its infrastructure footprint to deliver advanced (2G and 3.5G) mobile telecommunication services, CDMA fixed line and WiMax broadband services to citizens and institutions in the North and the East.

The company has already succeeded in delivering mobile and fixed line services as well as digital satellite television based information and entertainment services to support the infrastructure at the IPD camps.

Mobitel CEO Suren Amarasekera said Mobitel forged ahead in covering the Northern and the Eastern provinces.

“The North and East development plans for over the next three years is estimated to reach approximately US$100 million. We have already deployed over 25 base stations in the Northern province over the past few months and further plans to deploy over 100 base stations in the North and the East provinces and hope to accelerate our development in the liberated areas,” he said.

“We have prioritized our services around populated townships and trunk roadways. We believe it is essential for us to enable these two provinces to leap frog and have the very latest of mobile, voice, data and video services available at the very earliest. Our overall investment in deploying GSM amounts to over US$ 300 million countrywide,” he said.

Tigo CEO Dumindra Ratnayaka said that the company has already commenced its services in the Northern province. “We have commenced coverage in the East and hope to expand our coverage in the North very soon. We already have coverage in the Northern province including Vavuniya. Since we achieved high quality nationwide coverage in the rest of the country, we can focus most of our resources on expansion in the North and the East, he said.