SLT celebrates successful completion of i-Sri Lanka program

Thursday, 24 March 2016 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT), the leading ICT solutions provider in the country celebrated the successful completion of ‘i-Sri Lanka’ program by adding over 4,500 new access nodes across the island which comprised of an investment that exceeded Rs. 13 billion.

Through the completion of the i-Sri Lanka program, broadband connectivity was made available in almost all the cities of the country, while providing 1,300,000 more broadband connections at data rates of up to 20 Mbps.

It also supports Sri Lanka’s first Fibre-to-the-Home (FTTH) network which is set to deliver data speeds of 100 Mbps. With this, SLT will be able to serve 70,000 households through FTTH by the end of this year 2016.

The official closing ceremony of i-Sri Lanka programis scheduled to be held on 28 March at WatersEdge under the patronage of ZTE Corporation CEO John Lee, Huawei Technologies CEO Wangshunli who are SLT’s partners for the i-Sri Lanka program,together with representatives from both the companies as well as SLT Chairman P.G. Kumarasinghe Sirisena, SLT Group CEO DileepaWijesundera, the Board of Directors of SLT and other SLT officials.

“The i-Sri Lanka project was initiated in parallel to the Government policy of making ICT enabled nation. With the completion of the project we have now provided necessary infrastructure for fixed broadband, which provides robust data for the customers,” SLT Chief Network Officer Priyantha Fernandez told at a press conference yesterday.

He said under this initiative, the company sought to provide broadband connectivity at the speed of up to 20Mbps speed to 90% of its customer’s islandwide.

“When we commenced the project back in 2005, Sri Lanka was among the lowest category compared to developed countries, and our objective was to provide the broadband connectivity for at least 25% households of the fixed network up to 20Mbps speed. However, with the completion of the project we were able to offer 20Mbps speed to 90% of our customers’ islandwide,” he added.

SLT embarked on a massive project to upgrade its legacy network to a Next Generation Network (NGN) in year 2005 and it was expedited in the year 2011 as the company launched its i-Sri Lanka Program under the main vision ‘Broadening Horizons’.

Noting that the project has made Sri Lanka become one of the most connected countries in South Asia he asserted that this network transformation was the forerunner for unleashing many new and unique products and services across the areas of voice, data and video to SLT’s customers, inspired by the company’s vision to connect all Sri Lankans seamlessly with world class information, communication and entertainment services across the country.

The i-Sri Lanka initiative sought to bridge the digital divide in the country and ensure that all citizens in all parts of Sri Lanka has access to consistent, uninterrupted high speed internet that is on par with international standards. (CDS)