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| Sunday, 19 February 2006 |
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| News Business Features Editorial
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Lanka Bell buyers double in six months by Elmo Leonard Came the Lanka Bell advertisements, wire-less, expenditure-less, waiting-time-less, disturbance-less and in six months, the company has more than doubled its number of buyers to exceed 150,000. "But, it was only nine months ago that, Lanka Bell became wholly Sri Lankan owned," director Prasad Samarasinghe said. Lanka Bell has the largest CDMA network in Sri Lanka, which covers all parts of the country, except LTTE held areas, Samarasinghe said. Also Lanka Bell is one of the telecom providers who is internet accessible anywhere the country with the payment of call charges. The landscape of the telecom industry has changed. Up to the last decade, European countries were the investors in R&D and telecom projects in Asia. In the last decade, China and other Asian countries came into the forefront of the industry. Samarasinghe said that Sri Lanka has very clever telecommunication engineers, and Sri Lankans should encourage Sri Lankans to come into the forefront. "I am not adverse to free market economics," he said. Lanka Bell has the technology to provide mobile phones that will be of higher voice quality than existing mobile service providers, Samarasinghe said. But, the fixed line licence Lanka Bell has, does not allow the provision of mobile connections. Lanka Bell wants to take up the matter with the government, for unified licence, like India for instance. Banks now provide loans for the purchase of Lanka Bell phones, and Samarasinghe hopes companies would provide loans to their staff to secure telephone connections. Four months ago, Lanka Bell introduced the Bell Port Card system, where the card could be plugged into a laptop computer for internet access. |
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