Tigo is another upcoming service provider that has been involved in a branding exercise post its acquisition by Millicom Technologies. Formerly known as Celltel, Tigo has undergone a radical brand building exercise to give it a fresh lease on life. It targets the younger audience and has introduced several prepaid schemes to cater to this segment. The ARPU of Tigo has remained around $4, in line with its low priced schemes, to make it affordable for youngsters. Tigo has not been as aggressive as other players in adopting advanced wireless services and is yet to catch up in the race to improve its ARPU.

Although Hutch has maintained a healthy market share of 14%, the presence of this player in Sri Lanka has been fairly undermined. Hutch reached the 1mn customer mark in September 2007 and has grown at a decent rate since it started its operations in 2004.

Hutch like most players focuses more on pre-paid customers, in fact, atleast 90% of its customers are pre-paid. The ARPU was around $3 and is seen to be the least profitable of all players. However, with a goal to cover 80% of the population by 2008-09, the company has started to spread its operations island-wide.

Data services is another important market. SLT is a leading data services provider and this could be attributed to their access to nearly 1.4 mn households. Within the data services market it controls 80% of the market because of its strong ADSL connectivity throughout the island nation. SLT provides a varied gamut of services for enterprise and residential customers at attractive rates. By owning the landing station for cable such as SEA-ME-WE 4, SLT commands the data services market with its various service offerings ranging from leased lines to MPLS/IP VPN (multi-protocol label switching internet protocol virtual private network) to Metro Ethernet.

SLT is transforming itself from a traditional telecom provider to a provider of global Internet protocol solutions. As a part of this transformation it is overhauling its network architecture, to include IT system integration and business service portfolio expansion SLT has deployed a wide spectrum of technologies such as IP-MLPS which are needed to enable the optical fiber network to host a NGN (next generation network). It enjoys a good brand presence in the rural and urban regions and can leverage on its brand strength to provide innovative products and solutions. SLT has been a pioneer as far as Metro Ethernet is concerned delivering high quality speed to its customers.

The data services arm of Dialog, Dialog Broadband Networks (DBN) played a lead role in the “capability” extension by launching two wireless access networks architected to deliver fixed line and BWA (Broadband and Wireless Access) services. DBN Launched CDMA fixed line, and WiMax Broadband Networks, respectively, generating immediate revenue growth of 42 and 36%, on adjacent quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year basis, respectively. Dialog has also launched a satellite-based pay television service; Dialog Television (DTV) has made substantial inroads in the establishment of pay TV category in the ICT and infotainment landscape. It has also invested in laying down a fiber-optic transmission networks and microwave backbone radio connectivity for establishing a nationwide foot print.

Suntel as a provider focuses more on the enterprise segment and has been offering focused data services based on companies needs by verticals. Suntel is making inroads by offering a diverse portfolio of services and thereby trying to position itself as a one-stop shop for enterprises from all verticals.

Lanka Bell is more focused on data services for the retail segment. Although Lanka Bell provides enterprise products, it is yet to specialize on these services as its counterpart Suntel.

Lankacom is a relatively smaller player that has niche services only in the data and managed services segment. VSNL Lanka, although a smaller player, contributes significantly to the international market. Apart from providing data services to international players, VSNL Lanka also offers international voice minutes to carriers. Even though VSNL's contribution to the local data services market may be not significant, its role in the international market is commendable.

Conclusion
The Sri Lankan telecom market is quite advanced in terms of technologies deployed considering the fact that many countries in the subcontinent are yet to adopt 3G and WiMax technologies. With penetration levels touching 50%, the path to capturing the remaining 50% would not seem as daunting, provided that the economy does not decline. Assuming that the current situation prevails, and that the inflation is brought down from 23.8% to below 15%, the market would not face barriers in its path to reaching 100% penetration.

Nanditha Krishna
vadmail@cybermedia.co.in

The author is sr.research analyst, ICT Practice Frost & Sullivan– South Asia & Middle East