Status of the telecom industry in Sri Lanka, a feature in a government newspaper


Posted on August 22, 2013  /  1 Comments

A wide ranging discussion on ICTs carried in a government-owned newspaper I refuse to read.

In Sri Lanka the amount of money that we spend on communication is about 700 rupees a month per household on average according to the government survey – According to the Household income and expenditure survey it is about 3.5 percent of our non-food expenditures.

“We are getting more and more for the rupee that we spend for communication and we are using it more. So what I see is, the industry has to be very efficient and innovative because people expect more from them, for the same amount of money. They expect more every year. And this is one industry where people get more every year.

If companies are not efficient, they will start losing money. I think what will happen increasingly is that people will spend more as this country becomes a proper middle income country and then a high income country. People will be spending more of their income on non food items.

Right now we spend 37.5 percent of our income on food on average. And if we spend more we tend to spend on things like entertainment, healthcare etc. You have more money going to the communication side. If that happens, the companies can prosper. If they are simply giving voice services only for less and less money every year it is unlikely for them to be successful.

The banking sector in this country,which has not really served our people well and yet makes enormous amounts of profits, could come under pressure as people start making more payments using their mobile phones.That is possible.

Not in the short term but the medium term. It has already happened in countries such as Kenya and the Philippines. It is sort of catching here. Middle class people have banks. The poor people, all they have are these Samurdhi accounts which are extremely inflexible and do not allow you to transfer money.Mobile payments should be much easier.”

– See more at: http://www.dailynews.lk/?q=features/4g-end-voice#sthash.edwYdin9.dpuf

1 Comment


  1. Voice over LTE (VoLTE) is being trialed in a number of countries and is deployed in a few. The great thing about VoLTE is that it can enable prioritization for emergency communication personnel. RCS will allow voice and other data services to run simultaneously. It is a new era in voice :)