Airtel Signs $100-mn Investment Agreement To Start Lankan Ops

[@ksh@T 20]

COLOMBO:Bharti Airtel Lanka (Pvt) Ltd, a subsidiary of Indian telecom giant Bharti Airtel, has signed a 100-million dollars investment agreement with the Board of Investment (BOI) of Sri Lanka to begin Lankan operation by this year.

The agreement, signed yesterday, is the second phase of the company's commitment to invest 200 million dollars in Sri Lanka over the next 5 years, officials of BOI said.

With mobile penetration in Sri Lanka estimated at around 30 per cent and growing at a rate of approximately 2 million mobile users per annum, Bharti is looking at cornering a high market share in the next few years.

According to the officials, Airtel is expected to begin operations in a big way in Sri Lanka by this year end.

It will, however, have to compete with the Telekom Malaysia-owned Dialog Telecom (the largest operator in Sri Lanka), Celltel Lanka (owned by Luxembourg-based service provider Millicom International Cellular), Hutchison (owned by Hong Kong-based Hutchison Telecommunications) and Sri Lankan government-owned Mobitel.

Sri Lanka now has 2.7 million fixed access subscribers, 7.9 million mobile and 2,00,000 internet and email subscribers.

"The investment will enable Airtel here to roll out all passive infrastructure necessary to gear up the company for launch of its services," a BOI statement said.

It said this underlined the company's (Airtel) commitment to deliver quality services to the mobile subscriber market in Sri Lanka.