Sri Lanka Telecom links up with India’s BSNL to offer wider choice

India’s Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited Thursday officially kicked off a 1.8 billion rupee undersea cable unit with Sri Lanka Telecom, which will bring down call rates between South Asian countries.

The optical fibre cable, which run between Mt Lavinia (Sri Lanka) and Tuticorin in India, will enable SLT customers to enjoy high speed broadband services such as audio and video streaming.

“This project, historically, would be the biggest joint investment between India and Sri Lanka,” Sri Lanka Telecom said in a statement.

The Bharat Lanka Cable’s bandwidth of 10 gigabits per second, will be scaled up to a maximum of 160 gigabits per second at a later date, giving customers more connectivity options via Sri Lanka.

SLT also provides high speed global connectivity to South Asian countries through its investments in international submarine cables such as South East Asia, Middle East, Western Europe (SEA ME WE) 3 cable and the SEA ME WE 4.

The country’s biggest fixed line operator with 85 percent market share, SLT is also in the process of laying a submarine link between Sri Lanka and the Maldives through its telco partner Dhirragu.

Japan's Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corp. (NTT) controls 35.2 percent of SLT, the Sri Lankan government owns 49.5 percent and the public 15.3 percent.

Source: Lanka Business Online