Sri Lankan Mobile Telephony Market Heats Up Again – Cheapest Prepaid Package From Mobitel

The highly aggressive Sri Lankan mobile market has shaken once again with the introduction of a new tariff plan by Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel. India’s Airtel started operation in Sri Lanka from the January this year and almost all the existing operators started slashing mobile charges aggressively. However Airtel came up with a “Very Simple Plan” of Rs 2/min outgoing to any network with incoming totally free without a daily rental.  

With the new Mobitel SMART tariff plan outgoing local calls will be Rs 2.50 and incoming is totally free without any conditions. If the customer is using Mobitel network for more than a year 10% of a discount will be offered and if the time he spent on the network is more than 2 years a discount of 20% will be offered. Therefore a customer who has been using Mobitel for 2 years can expect outgoing calls to any network at Rs 2.00 per minute.

At present Dialog has the largest market share which is they are loosing rapidly and Mobitel , Tigo and Hutch shares the rest more or less. Dialog has been able to minimize the number of customers who are abandoning the network with the introduction of Dialog Blaster package. But most popular Upahara post paid package from Mobitel is still on top and still manages to grab customers in thousands. Probably we can expect some kind of a tariff revision for Upahara also in the near future. 

Mobitel Smart New Tariff Details 

VAS	1st Year	After  1st Year	After  2nd Year
SMS to M Best Friend Mobitel Number **	50 cents
SMS to Mobitel Numbers	75 Cents	68 Cents	60 Cents
SMS to any other Local Number	Rs. 1	90 cents	80 Cents
SMS to Overseas Numbers per message	Rs. 5
MMS to Mobitel Numbers	Rs. 2	Rs. 1.80	Rs. 1.60
MMS to Email or any other Local Number	Rs. 5	Rs. 4.50	Rs. 4
MMS to Overseas Numbers	Rs. 10
GPRS  (Uplink and Downlink Speeds upto 1Mbps)	1 cent per kB

Dial  #111# to activate new Mobitel Smart package.

Airtel Ready To Launch in Sri Lanka!!!

May be the mostly awaited mobile network Airtel, is about to strart it's operations in Sri Lanka very soon. The launch has been postponing several times since last year by the company. The network prefix will be 075 and the network id is SRI-05. If you do a GSM network search most probably you will be able to see that Airtel network is up and running. In the mean time Airtel has set up some outlets also around the city but still the naming boards are covered.

It is expected that Airtel will offer attractive packages which will make other operators also to slash prices more. Meanwhile existing operators have already taken some measures to strengthen their respective customer base by slash prices and introducing new packages. As the Dialog, the market leader is gradually loosing the market share, Mobitel has aggressively attracted millions of new customers within a short period of time. As a results Mobitel network is being oversubscribed and very often gets busy. In order to keep the customer base steady Mobitel will be required to do a rapid network expansion. 

   

Airtel Sri lanka Has Loose The Confidence

Bharti Airtel, one of India's largest mobile operators received 2G and 3G license from Sri Lanka Telecommunication Regularity Commission to roll out the Sri Lanka's 5th mobile network. In a press conference officials revealed that Airtel will invest $150 million within 3 years of time in Sri Lanka. After several months of receiving this licences Airtel advertised about their job vacancies in some week end news papers and registered a domain name also under Bharti Airtel Lanka (Pvt) Ltd. This domain was also hanging around for several week without a web site (redirected to hosting account default page) and now it seems they haven't paid for the hosting account. how ever they have registerd this domain for another 10 more years in advance.
In the last quarter of 2007 I noticed some Airtel engineers going here and there searching for locations to install towers. But after that I don't aware whether they have installed any but I guess still they haven't.At the same time it was said that they were planning to start Airtel operations in Sri Lanka by April 2008.
As things goes like this I don't think that Airtel will be able to do a remarkable revolution in Sri Lanka in upcoming years. The reason is Airtel hinted that they are going to reduce the outgoing call charges to Rs 2 per minute.It was a great news for all the mobile users at that time because average rate was around Rs 6 at that time. Most of the mobile users who were Dialog GSM customers were paying around Rs 7 per minute without VAT and Hutch, Mobitel and Tigo customers were paying around Rs 6 - 5. Later Mobitel reduced their charges to Rs 2 Mobitel 2Mobitel within day time and following that Hutch also reduced to Rs 2 all day along. Very recently Tigo launched 3 revolutionary packages called T1,T2 and T2 which charges only Rs 3 per outgoing minute just Rs 1 more than Airlte's promised price.
However let's hope some more leverage in Sri Lankan mobile phone market with the Airtel entrance as it will benefit all of us.