Telecom Lead Asia: Sri Lanka’s Telecommunications Regulatory Commission said it allocated 4G airwaves to Dialog Axiata for $26.25 million on Thursday.
Dialog dominates the local telecoms market, accounting for 55 percent of revenue market share.
The country will become South Asia’s first with a country-wide mobile 4G/LTE network. Roll out is expected soon. Sri Lanka already has fixed-line telephone 4G in key cities, but the new mobile 4G network will allow users to access high-speed Internet with their hand-held devices across the country.
Sri Lanka became the first country in South Asia to introduce mobile phones in 1989 and the first to roll out a 3G network in 2004.
Bharti Airtel Lanka did not participate in the 4G spectrum auction held for 10MHz band in the 1,800 spectrum in Colombo on Thursday.
In India, Airtel, which is in the process of restructuring its debt, is the #1 LTE player. Airtel offers 4G services in six Indian cities, including Kolkata, Bangalore, Pune and Chandigarh.
Anusha Palpita, director general of Sri Lanka’s Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, said that only three of the island’s five mobile operators took part in the competitive bids.
Mobitel and Etisalat were other two participants in the sealed-bid process. The Lankan government had set the floor price for bids at 800 million Lankan rupees.
“We raised a sum of rupees 3.28 billion from the sale of LTE mobile spectrum. This sum was higher than expected,” Palpita said.
“LTE deployment will usher the country into a new era of advanced wireless services including fast high capacity mobile broadband with wide spread coverage,” Palpita added.
Sri Lanka’s current number of mobile phones far exceeds its 20 million population the data shows.
