Sri Lanka regulator, asleep at the switch for years, becomes belligerent upon waking up

Posted on December 30, 2009 / 2 Comments

Finally the TRC has woken up and started paying attention to broadband QoSE. Unfortunately, like many people and animals who are prodded awake from deep sleep, it is grumpy. It is talking about guilt and “taking action” rather than sitting down with the operators and finding a solution.

“The Telecom Regulatory Commission is conducting its own investigations on mobile broadband speeds advertized by operators,” Priyantha Kariyapperuma, director general of the TRC said.

“If any mobile operator is found guilty of providing slower speeds than advertized, the TRC will take action against them. Our report will be out in about two to three weeks.”

A study on broadband speeds in South Asian countries conducted by the regional think-tank LIRNEasia showed Sri Lankan surfers were getting less speed than claimed by telecom companies.

I hope that the TRC will become more reasonable after a few weeks pass by and the grumpiness wears off. Otherwise we will have to ask someone to investigate why the TRC was inactive all these years while consumers were complaining, bloggers were ranting and peer regulatory agencies taking action.

In the meantime, we invite the TRC to use the rich information accumulated in our website since 2006 May (3.5 years ago) when we ran the first post on the subject. Prior to that Mr Sanath Siriwardene, who communicated with us through the blog had made extensive presentations to the TRC in writing and in person and had even published some articles in the media. I am sure Mr Siriwardene will also be happy to share his expertise. In particular, we invite the TRC to look at our benchmark data where we show that both Bangladesh and Bhutan now have lower leased-line prices than Sri Lanka. When competition forces retail prices down while input costs remain high, quality is bound to suffer.

2 Comments

idiot
December 30, 2009, 4:43 pm
Mobile operators in the frenzy of competition offer services below par of what they promote. Customers demand is also getting high for broadband.
Broadband will inevitably provide many opportunities for rural Sri Lanka for development in SME sector.
It is more prudent for TRC to be a facilitator of QoS rather than imposing rules to decide the bad guy.
Rohan Samarajiva
December 30, 2009, 11:33 pm
And I forgot. Why talk only about mobile operators? Does the TRC want us to run another ad showing that the fixed delivery is less than promise too?

Here are the results, for easy reference http://lirneasia.net/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/QoSE-report-V_3-12.pdf