Sri Lanka is a small and densely populated country. When the oldest mobile operator (started business in 1989) says that it is adding 40 towers a month, it shows a real hard push to increase coverage in rural Sri Lanka. The reward is reaching 2 million customers and high customer satisfaction ratings, according to the CEO.
Sri Lankan mobile operator Tigo, a unit of Millicom International Cellular, said it had reached two million subscribers in 2008 after heavy investments to expand its network coverage.
A statement from the company, formerly known as Celltel Lanka, attributed the growth to “network expansion, the strength of the brand and excellent customer service.”
“The year 2008 saw heavy investment by the company to expand the network adding an average of 40 towers a month,” the statement said.
“The way we define a customer is the strictest in the country, which is why we normally do not disclose the size of our customer base,” said Tigo chief executive Dumindra Ratnayaka.
2 Comments
Absent
Prof, is it possible to know the Basis of Dialog’s Claim of 5 Mn. Is there any regulation in Sri Lanka which govern subscriber number? What is the situation in other countries?
Rohan Samarajiva
There is no rule anywhere on what constitutes a mobile subscriber. After much discussion, we gave up. We only say mobile SIMs in operation. Different companies have different rules, in some cases like Dialog for different value reloads.
Only place where overcounting has been a serious problem is India, where spectrum is given on the basis of how many subs a company has. In other places overcounting simply dilutes ARPU. So what they gain on one side they lose on the other.
RECON-SL: A Sri Lanka Household Electricity Dataset for ML & AI Research
RECON-SL is an open dataset developed by LIRNEasia with funding support from the Lacuna Fund and in partnership with LECO. It combines electricity consumption records, smart meter readings, and household survey data from over 4,000 Sri Lankan homes to support energy policymaking, social research, and machine learning.
LIRNEasia Senior Research Manager Gayani Hurulle at the Internet Governance Forum Sri Lanka 2026
The Internet Governance Forum Sri Lanka (IGF Sri Lanka) 2026 was held on 23 September under the theme ‘Empowering the Internet in the Age of Intelligence through Multistakeholderism’. The event brought together stakeholders from government, industry, academia, civil society and the technical community to discuss key issues in internet governance.
Is Personally Identifiable Information safe in the hands of the State?
In an article published on 25 September 2026 in the DailyFT, LIRNEasia Chair Professor Rohan Samarajiva discusses the risks of the state holding large amounts of personally identifiable information (PII). He looks at the misuse of electoral-registry information during the July 1983 pogrom, which critics of public-service digitalisation, particularly the Sri Lanka Unique Identity (SLUDI), cite as a reason for extreme caution, if not halting such initiatives.
Links
User Login
Themes
Social
Twitter
Facebook
RSS Feed
Contact
9A 1/1, Balcombe Place
Colombo 08
Sri Lanka
+94 (0)11 267 1160
+94 (0)11 267 5212
info [at] lirneasia [dot] net
Copyright © 2026 LIRNEasia
a regional ICT policy and regulation think tank active across the Asia Pacific