Mobitel’s pioneering LTE initiative to lead Lanka to a developed nation

Mobitel has committed to embrace and offer the latest and the most advanced technologies that are needed for Sri Lanka’s rapid development.

“We strongly believe that embracing latest ICT technologies like LTE will lay the most conducive infrastructure for other sectors to grow and blossom at a fast pace, leading Sri Lanka towards a fully-developed nation,” said Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel Chairman Nimal Welgama.

“As the National Mobile Telecom Services Provider, we are committed to take every initiative towards developing our nation through the use of ICT... We strongly believe that LTE will enhance the capabilities towards fulfilling these ever-increasing ICT needs of citizens of Sri Lanka and thereby lead our country towards an infocom and knowledge rich society,” added Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel CEO Suren J. Amarasekera.

Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel said its pioneering and successful trial of Long Term Evolution (LTE) is expected to lead the country to a developed nation via an infocom and knowledge rich society.

The company recently announced that it had carried out a successful trial of LTE technology. achieving speeds of up to 96 Mbps.  Having launched the first Super-3.5G HSPA network in South Asia in December 2007 and subsequently carried out trial of HSPA+, MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) with downlink speeds of up to 28 Mbps in 2009, another first in the region, Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel has broken the speed barrier even further to demonstrate broadband speeds of up to 96Mbps in downlink and 49Mbps in uplink using LTE technology, setting another record in the region for the third consecutive time.

“Technology advances are among the key drivers that push outwards a country’s production possibility frontier, catalysing economic growth. As such, Mobitel has committed to embrace and offer the latest and the most advanced technologies that are needed for Sri Lanka’s rapid development,” added Welgama.        



The prime factor behind the super-fast speeds demonstrated in LTE technology when compared to existing and most advanced 3G technologies is that the spectral efficiency is four to five times greater in LTE than in the most advanced 3G technologies.

The use of OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing) carrier modulation in LTE allows easy upward scalability for higher bandwidth requirements, coupled with MIMO technology, which effectively uses multiple antennae in both the terminal device (data dongle, tablet PC/smart phone, etc.) and radio network to transmit and receive multiple streams of information within the same spectrum. The demonstration was carried out in the 2.6GHz frequency range and initiatives are under way to explore operations at other spectrum bands for commercial deployment.

Witnessing this trial at Mobitel’s Flagship Care Centre, the Director General of Telecommunications Anusha Palpita said: “TRCSL is committed to assist all the telecommunication operators in Sri Lanka to develop world class telecommunication network facilities in the country. The spectrum allocation for the commercial operation of LTE will soon be finalised where the operators will be able to launch nationwide enhanced ICT infrastructure to benefit all businesses and consumers in Sri Lanka through this latest evolution in mobile broadband technology.”

This LTE trial not only demonstrated the superiority of LTE technology but it also strengthened Mobitel’s confidence and ability in the timely commercial deployment of a LTE ready network. As such, Mobitel hopes to leverage on this trial to set up a commercial network that will build on the immense potential this technology offers for a wide variety of end-user offerings.

ZTE Corporation of China was selected by Mobitel as its technology partner to deploy this state-of-the-art LTE ready Next-Generation-Network.

A factor which particularly distinguishes LTE from other technologies is the improved quality of experience, due to reduction in latency. This enhances the user experience of time-critical applications such as voice, video and on-line gaming while extending potential benefits to businesses as well as finance sector, by significantly reducing time taken on data transport for time critical transactions such as online trading and other financial transactions.

“The growing power of ICT services and terminal devices as well as emerging trends such as cloud computing and machine-to-machine communications, require network infrastructure capable of ultra high data link speeds and bandwidth,” added Amarasekera.