This photograph taken few weeks back at Talawakele, on the way to Nuwara Eliya, 180 km from Colombo, tells a long story. What you see are the lined residences of the estate workers, colloquially known as ‘lines’ or ‘layim’ in local language. Estate workers are among the least privileged and poorest communities in Sri Lanka.
Note the five TV dishes. That means they are still connected to electronic networks, though it is largely one-way. It seems many estate workers, the descendants of 19th century Indian migrants love to watch South Indian channels more than local Tamil ones.
Meanwhile Sri Lanka’s Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (TRCSL) is attempting to launch its own satellite. Its objectives have not been made public. It cannot be for Internet because not only VSAT is an amazingly expensive solution to connect remote areas, as seen in the Nenasala experiment, but these areas can easily be covered with 3G at a faction of the cost of a VSAT. Other objective might be TV broadcasting. But why expensive satellite broadcasting for a country already covered?
Would the visionary Arthur Clarke would ever have approved the exorbitant expenditure to the tax payer, to be done in his name to provide communication to a community that is already communicating quite well without government involvement?
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Rohan Samarajiva
Also related: http://lirneasia.net/2009/02/on-the-cons-of-satellites/. Obviously, it does not make sense to launch a broadcast satellite. So what remains is compelling the telecom operators to use it.
When we have perfectly good submarine cables and competitive commercial satellite system, why does the government want to get into this complex and risky business?