SLT to play major role in ICT

Manjari Peiris

This moment marks a milestone step to take forward science and technology in this country. The President having had realized the importance of ICT literacy among our people, declared the year 2009 as the year for English and ICT to get the optimum benefit of knowledge based economy for our people.

Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) has recognized its very important role in this process. The ability to literacy in ICT in Sri Lanka which was at eight percent is now improving and has reached up to 27 percent which is an advantage. We have a big gap between language literacy rate which is 97 percent and ICT literacy rate. We have to bridge this gap soon by increasing usage of computer and internet connectivity," Professor Tissa Vitarana said.

An agreement was signed between the Sri Lanka Telecom and the Science and Technology Ministry on Wednesday at the Ministry office to provide communication facilities free of charge to the Ministry and other institutions working under its purview and the islandwide Vidatha Resource Centres.

Thus SLT would provide Broadband internet and total voice communication facilities using wired and wireless technologies.

The SLT Broadband internet services are provided through high capacity dedicated Internet Leased Line (ILL) and ADSL technology, providing connectivity to SLTnet which is the largest ISP in the country.

This connectivity would provide internet facility to all the locations under the Ministry with a super fast access to online web applications such as web search, web mail, calendar, images, VOIP calling applications, audio, video and maps.

The Minister said that the connectivity rates are exorbitant in this country when compared with the rest of the world and said the Telecom and the Telecom Regulation Authority are setting up a framework to provide fair and cheaper connectivity rates in our country and hopefully this initiative would be able to provide these services at cheaper rates.

We are mainly focusing in promoting the SME sector through promotion of already functioning 241 Vidatha Resource Centres, he said.