Sri Lanka Telecom Inks $ 415 Million ICT Agreement with BOI

Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT), the flagship national ICT solutions provider and a broadband services and backbone infrastructure operator is has announced that the company has received flagship status from the Board of Investment (BOI) after committing a total investment of USD 415.44 million to undertake telecommunication, information technology, broadband and infrastructure expansion in the country within the next two years.

This investment agreement will encompass the expansion of multi-faceted national ICT infrastructures: Internet Data Centers (IDCs), Voice Services, Enterprise and Wholesale Services, High Speed Broadband Services, Peo TV expansion, Fibre Optic Network expansion, 4G LTE expansion, International Connectivity, Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and Wi-Fi Wireless Broadband projects.

The SLT group has invested over USD 1.3 billion in telecommunication service provisioning since coming under the BOI umbrella in 2007, which includes the total value commitment of this new agreement; and the overall investment the group has made throughout its entire 150 year span which is enormous in terms of magnitude. Since obtaining BOI approval in 2007, SLT has invested in excess of Rs. 57 billion/ USD 485 million to improve the country’s telecommunication infrastructure.

Nimal Welgama, the Chairman, SLT Group commented, “Investments made by SLT towards the country for a period of over 150 years have placed Sri Lanka as well as our country’s entire ICT sector at the forefront of the region by facilitating multi-faceted ICT solutions to the nation, and  helping to increase its strategic geographical advantage. We are indeed humbled by the confidence placed in us by the GoSL, and BOI.”

Dr. Lakshman Jayaweera, the Chairman – BOI of Sri Lanka said, “We are happy to see the initiatives taken by Sri Lanka Telecom to change the techno - landscape of the country, and play a major role as the facilitator of  investments into our country and I take my hat off to the SLT team. We need this kind of development to take our country’s economy to USD 100 billion GDP within the next couple of years in line with GoSL’s economic goals. We believe that major development like this will take this country to the next stage of development. This will bring many more benefits in its wake including other indirect investments and more FDI streaming to the country etc. As BOI, we are very glad that we can be the initiators and we are ready to assist Sri Lanka Telecom and any other investor.”

Soon after the end of the conflict, SLT was at the forefront to rebuild and restore the national telecommunication infrastructure in the cleared areas of the Northern and Eastern provinces of our country.  The Telecommunication Regulatory Commission (TRC) has entrusted SLT with the task of building the National Telecommunication Backbone Network (NBN) to provide high speed connectivity, with highest redundancy and uninterrupted access to services to all telecommunication service providers in Sri Lanka. With all these endeavors SLT will be a catalyst for change and transformation in Sri Lanka and thereby truly unite the entire nation as ‘one country, one voice’.