Bharti Airtel launches service in Sri Lanka

COLUMBO, SRI LANKA: India's telecom major Bharti Airtel today announced the launch of its operations in Sri Lanka, under Bharti Airtel Lanka (Pvt) Ltd.

According to the media reports, the operations have been launched on 3.5G network and plans to invest around, $200 million in its Sri Lanka operations. Bharti Airtel would compete here with Telekom Malaysia's Dialog Telekom, Millicom International Cellular's Tigo, Hutchison Telecom's Hutch, and Sri Lanka Teleco.

Amali Nanayakkara, CEO, Bharti Airtel Lanka, said , “The company has established 12,000 outlets in five of the nine provinces in the country and it was already working on expanding the services to remaining provinces - Uva, North-Central, Northern and Eastern provinces - at the earliest.”

“In addition to providing telecommunication services, Airtel has already provided direct and indirect employment to over 2,000 Sri Lankans with its launch in the highly concentrated market. It is a beginning of a new era in mobile marketing here,” Nanayakkara said.

Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman and managing director, Bharti Airtel said, “We are delighted at being given this opportunity to serve the people of Sri Lanka and contribute to the growth story of the country. It will be Airtel’s sincere endeavor to drive affordability in the Sri Lankan market and empower more and more people to experience the benefits of mobile Internet and telephony. ”

“We are confident that with our experience of serving around 88 million customers, we will make a positive impact on the telecom landscape of Sri Lanka,” he added.