Etisalat makes headway

"Etisalat Lanka hopes to become the leader in technology with the financial backing of Etisalat introducing the latest and best technology into Sri Lanka," said Etisalat Lanka's Chief Technical Officer Sanath Pilapitiya. Pilapitiya has been in the company for over 16 years.

Etisalat Lanka’s CTO, Sanath Pilapitiya

In leading his technical team he adopts the approach that he initially used on himself, "From the day I joined I was encouraged to contribute ideas and opinions, which empowered me to make suggestions. It was a very interactive and progressive approach, which I continue to adopt with my team." During his 16 years in the company Pilapitiya has seen many developments in technology.

"When I joined there were only four cell towers for Celltell. The only available technology was analogue cellular, from which in 2000 we moved to GSM. We learnt a lot as things progressed and new technologies came in. We were a little late to get into GSM. We were able to enter the market with the latest and most compatible GSM technology, which was manufactured with future proof technology. We were also the first to introduce pre-paid which became very famous."

Educated at Trinity college, he has a BSc (Hons) from the University of Peradeniya with a first class. He topped the hiring test at Celltell and joined then as a planning engineer.

Now as Chief Technical Officer his role within the company is to ensure maintenance of a certain grade and quality of service to the customer, network expansion in line with the growth plan and tangible contribution to the growth of the business.