Sri Lanka Telecom PLC (SLT) Group has posted a revenue of Rs.81.44 billion equivalent to US$454 million for the financial year ending December 31, 2018,with impressive growth of 7.53%. Thanks to the FTTH and other fiber related services, SLT’s investments are now paying back.
Though the incumbent telecommunication service provider could make profit in all sectors of its business, major growth has been reported from the fiber related telecommunication sector, largely driven by Enterprise and Carrier related businesses, FTTH, IPTV and Data related services together with mobile operations. Since the global trend is shifting towards data business, SLT is now more focusing on data related products.
Sri Lanka has the potential to become a hub for the international submarine cables connecting South East Asian countries to the Africa and Europe. This factor is a big plus for Sr Lanka as a whole when SLT divert its focus to the data business.
Sri Lanka has currently two submarine cables connected to it, one to India and the other to the Maldives.
The growth in the fiber network sector would encourage SLT to invest more in the next-generation networks. As explained above the FTTH, IPTV and data related services together with Carrier related and Enterprise businesses have largely driven the revenues to this level.
SLT’s Gross Profit was reported at Rs.19.13 billion (US$107 million) with year on year growth of 6.00%. Exhibiting a year on year growth of 33.47 %, SLT’s net profit after tax reached to the level of Rs.1.91 billion (US$10.7 million) profit was largely impacted by the Rs. 1.20 billion FOREX losses.
The growth of revenue and better management of operating costs have boosted the profits. Optical fiber networks contribute to lower operational costs as the number of electrical equipment are significantly reduced compared to the legacy networks. SLT has also taken initiatives to mitigate any future FOREX losses using hedging strategies.
SLT Broadband introduced FTTx Technology, somewhere in 2014 by increasing the speeds up to 100 Mbps. SLT is once again revolutionizing Internet usage across the country, by unveiling a significant enhancement to the SLT Broadband user experience.The provider offers packages with download speeds of up to 100 Mbps and upload speeds of up to 50 Mbps, which is sufficient to play an array of HD channels and multiple connections with PeoTV. SLT also offered two voice lines and an ability to continue the same number for customers migrating from Megaline to attract more subscribers.
Sri Lanka has more than 28 million mobile phones (Mobile subscription of 131.6 per 100 people) in use and has a teledensity of 11.6 (11.6 fixed phones per 100 people
There are three fixed broadband providers in Sri Lanka. Dialog Broadband Networks provide broadband services using Wi-Fi, WiMAX and LTE TDD technologies, while Lanka Bell WiMAX and LTE TDD for its services. Only SLT uses FTTH broadband technology apart from ADSL2, VDSL2, Wi-Fi, and LTE TDD technologies for broadband service delivery.
Sri Lanka’s mobile broadband sector is active with Airtel, Dialog, Hutch, and Mobitel. These operators use a variety of mobile broadband delivery technologies such as GPRS, EDGE, UMTS, HSPA, HSPA+, DC-HSPA+, LTE FDD, VoLTE, VoWiFi and LTE-A.
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