For a long time, we were the voice in the wilderness. But now the regulator is on the job. If the promised results materialize, we can move on to something else:
“Three months ago, most operators were provided services 70% less than the speed rate advertised in the package”, TRC Director General Anusha Palpita said. The speed-up move came after the TRC carried out an evaluation of the quality of service including speeds of fixed broadband services – ADSL and WiMAX.
Mr. Palpita said the study showed that the speeds of majority of broadband services fell short of the rate advertised and hovered within a range of 10 to 25 percent during busy hours.
The Sunday Times story says performance improved to 50% in past three months. Sorry, our tests did not catch that much of an improvement.
5 Comments
Naveen
SLT ADSL become very slow… im using 512Kbps unlimited one now download speed is less than 100Kbps
PravNJ
Wireline needs a huge boost. Perhaps our telecom backbone needs to be beefed up? And of course our international bandwidth needs to be boosted as well :) advances in wireless and wifi would mean nothing without a high bandwidth backbone network and a larger international bandwidth!
Sanjana Hattotuwa
” Recent download speed tests conducted on fixed broadband services by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) and subsequent corrective measures adopted by TRCSL have led to broadband operators improving their download speeds by over 60% and in turn ensuring a much faster service to broadband users during peak hours.”
Does Lirneasia’s testing corroborate this?
From TRCSL Releases Broadband Download Speed Test Results, http://www.cityhitsonline.com/2010/12/29/trcsl-releases-broadband-download-speed-test-results/
Sanjana
Rohan Samarajiva
@Sanjana
TRC is reporting only fixed broadband results; that means they are reporting ADSL and WiMAX. We report ADSL and 3G based on dongles. Direct comparison not possible for this reason and also because of different test periods. Our method is public information and has been publicly discussed with operators and stakeholders since 2008. We are waiting for the TRC method to be made public.
Please see debate in the normal pseudonymous style on this post.
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