Milestone in Broadband technology

Sri Lanka set up another milestone on the region’s Broadband Technology landscape on Friday with an exposition of South East Asia’s first 4.5G demonstration featuring download speeds of over 1Gbps (Gigabits per second).

The capability test was carried out on the Huawei Technologies’ LTE infrastructure of Dialog Axiata, a 4G network provider.

The demonstration established the ability of the network to deliver throughputs of over 1 Gbps on the LTE Radio (Air) Interface, setting a solid foundation for the future evolution of the nation’s 4G services to a technology generation well ahead of neighbouring markets, a company spokesman said.

Following the test, Sri Lanka joins a select circle of 20 countries where 4.5G capabilities have been demonstrated.

In 2014, Dialog Axiata launched its pioneering 4G services on FD-LTE and TD-LTE technologies.

Dialog’s 4G LTE networks have since evolved to deliver burst speeds up to 100 MBps and provides population coverage of over 50% with respect to ultra-high speed 4G services, he said. Following in the footsteps of the company’s 3G-HSPA network which provides a population coverage of over 83%, Dialog’s 4G LTE Services are expected to provide ultra high speed broadband coverage to all populated areas of the country in the near future.

The ITU names Sri Lanka as exhibiting the lowest broadband tariffs in the Asia Pacific Region, while Akamai, in its report of ‘State of the Internet – Connectivity’ points to Sri Lanka leading the region if not the world in terms of the affordability, availability, quality and inclusivity of broadband services.