Lanka Business Online
Mon Nov 2007
 
 
Open Sesame:

Sri Lankan telcos push for liberalisation

Nov 05, 2007 (LBO) - Sri Lanka's teleco operators are pushing the industry regulator to remove technology limits and allow networks to share resources as part of a broad plan to liberalise the market further, officials said.
The wish list -- prepared during an industry pow-wow with the telecom watchdog last week -- also includes prickly issues like allowing free incoming calls for seven million mobile phone users, re-aligning spectrum and allowing users to keep their own number when switching to rival operators.

"We asked operators to put down everything they wanted. The list will be first pruned down on a priority basis, before target dates are set for implementation," Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (TRC) Director General, Kanchana Ratwatte said.

What the operators want from the TRC

  • Universal licences
  • Re-align spectrum
  • Electronic universal number
  • Share common resources like towers, fibre optic cables etc
  • Toll free and premium services
  • Interconnection regime between fixed and mobile operators
  • Asymetric regulation
  • National roaming, which allows operators without islandwide footprint to shift their customers to another network when they are out of range
  • Quality of service
  • Install a total next generation network
Telecommunications is one of the fastest growing sectors in Sri Lanka, which has three fixed-line operators and four mobile operators. The fifth mobile operator, India's Bharti Airtel, will start operations next year.

Industry players are keen the regulator dismantle restrictions on the type of technology they can use given the current context where operators are given separate licenses for mobile, wireless local loop and wireline connections.

Amidst these restrictions, fixed line operators are allowed to use mobile technology to rollout cheaper phone connections to far flung areas, but cellular operators are not allowed to follow the fixed line route.

Operators are also prevented from sharing network resources like telecom towers and the fibre optic backbone, making it an expensive exercise to offer communications facilities to less affluent people outside the capital of Colombo.

Sri Lanka's biggest telephone company, Sri Lanka Telecom for instance, has a monopoly on using copper lines for their network expansion. However, SLT also uses wireline and wireless technologies to offer cheaper phone connections.

As a result, companies like Sri Lanka's biggest cellular operator Dialog Telekom, are ploughing millions of rupees to lay fibre and install towers in remote villages to offer some form of connectivity.

"We have no issues in allowing other operators to share our network for a fee," Dialog's Chief Executive Hans Wijayasuriya told reporters last week after launching Wi-Max or high-speed broadband connections using wireless technologies.

The slow progress in deploying phone lines in rural communities has been on policymakers' radar for sometime now, but service providers have been reluctant to push their networks into rural areas for a lack of returns.

Analysts see tremendous potential for telecommunications growth. Only about 50 of every 100 people on the island of 19.5 million people own a fixed line or mobile telephone.

"We have seven million active mobile phone users, little over two million fixed line users...the way things are going, we will hit 10 million subscribers in both segments before the year ends," Ratwatte said.

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