Mobitel completes mega network expansion to lead Sri Lanka’s ICT transformation

SLT Mobitel said yesterday it has successfully completed a mega network expansion which it is confident will lead the country's ICT transformation.

Mobitel CEO Lalith de Silva commenting on the expansion drive said that, “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," the CEO said.

According to him 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’.”

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

“This expansion project involved more than 70 partner companies, 200 engineers and more than 1500 skilled and unskilled labour.” 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. He added, “We consider the Productivity, Cost Optimisation and Safe and Pleasant Working Environment as three pillars of Engineering Excellence and we try to uphold these values so that Engineering Excellence is meaningful to all stake-holders.”

Mobitel General Man-ager Projects and Network Planning Chandana Guna-sekara further elaborated on the next stage. “LTE or Long Term Evolution is the fourth 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.” No other invention has had a greater impact on social interaction than the advent of mobile communications. How mobile communication has revolutionised 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.

Mobitel has always been in the past is leading in the forefront and is determined to be the leader of the ICT transformation of Sri Lanka for a new era and as the national service provider consider it as its bounden duty.