"If I were to trace back ten years, we took that device that was considered a luxury - a digital cellular phone - and we took it to every corner of the country," Dialog Telekom CEO, Hans Wijesuriya said at the launch of Dialog's pay television service.

"Digital or anything new is really created in order make to make things more affordable and available."

Sri Lanka, which has a population of under 20 million, now has more than five million mobile phones, and the industry is growing close to 50 percent a year.

A prepaid mobile connection can now be bought for as little as three dollars, and a phone for about 50 dollars compared 1750 US dollars when analogue mobile phones were launched in Sri Lanka.

Last year Dialog bought CBN Sat, for 523 million after it was closed by authorities under amidst controversy last year. It also bought a terrestrial TV firm Asset Media.

CBN sat had about 20,000 customers when Dialog bought the firm, and Dialog is planning to use its own distribution network to push the TV service to customers.

“The subscription that is 17,900 rupees can be applied for, through the dialog centres in the island,” Nushad Perera General Manager Sales and Marketing at Dialog said.

The satellite based service now has 30 local and foreign tv and radio channels.

Dialog hopes to increase the channels to 50 in the future and introduce new subscription plans apart from the available 500, 900 and 1,400 rupee plans.

The biggest capitalized stock on the Colombo bourse, Dialog reported a 7.55 billion rupee group net profit for the nine months to September 2006, while revenues climbed 47 percent to 18.89 billion rupees, over the same period 2005.

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