Mobitel in large scale network expansion drive

No other invention has had a greater impact on social interaction than the advent of mobile communications. How mobile communication has revolutionized the way businesses and humans interact needs no elaboration. Yet what we witness around is just the change that has been brought in by the facility of voice communication and to a smaller extent the textural messages which is only the first phase of the revolution.

We have now stepped on to the second rung of mobile data communications and Mobitel as has always been in the past is leading in the forefront. Mobitel is determined to be the leader of the ICT transformation of Sri Lanka and as the national service provider consider it as its bounden duty.

Lalith de Silva, CEO of Mobitel

Rasantha Hettithanthrige, Senior General Manager

Chandana Gunasekara, General Mannager- Projects and Network Planning

Lalith de Silva, CEO of Mobitel said, “my prime responsibility is to ensure that a world class, state of the art network with widest reach is in place. I have to align Mobitel with the broader vision of the government of making Sri Lanka the knowledge hub of Asia. We are proud to announce that we have just completed our biggest stage of expansion by increasing our total number of 2G and 3G base stations by over a mammoth 1000 sites within a record breaking period.

We have now become a dominant operator servicing North and East following the liberation of those areas which is a priority component of the government’s development strategy. Mobitel network excels in coverage, but also in quality, capacity and speed. We are planning even bigger investments to further extend our network as well as equip ourselves with world class ICT capabilities and to maintain the technology leadership position in South Asia.

Finally, it is not the technology for its own sake but the customer experience that matters. We are committed to deliver that as our tag line loudly says ‘We Care Always.”

Rasantha Hettithanthrige, Senior General Manager – Engineering and Operations gave us another glimpse of this gigantic undertaking just completed.

“This expansion project involved more than 70 partner companies, 200 engineers and more than 1,500 skilled and unskilled labor,”This massive expansion is indeed a remarkable achievement, showcasing Mobitel’s ability to innovate and operate profitably whilst offering the latest and best services to its customers.

“we consider the productivity, cost optimization and safe and pleasant working environment as 3 pillars of engineering excellence and we try to uphold these values so that engineering excellence is meaningful to all stake-holders”

Chandana Gunasekara, General Mannager – Projects and Network Planning of Mobiitel further elaborated on the next stage.

“LTE or Long Term Evolution is the 4th generation (4G) mobile technology which will be the next leading technology for mobile broadband services globally. All our new base stations will be LTE ready. We are also on a further drive to educate and demonstrate LTE to our customers and we are indeed proud to say that we are the first in South Asia to do so. All the base stations are connected through SLT nationwide fibre network ensuring high reliability, high quality and high capacity bandwidth connectivity”

As technology evolves, new and exciting possibilities are created. The development of infrastructure is both the inspiration and the catalyst for the country’s advancement. Mobitel is determined to be a major partner of the government’s effort to transform Sri Lanka towards a new era,” he added.