3G in Sri Lanka a success/failure

Anyone who has been reading the business sections these days would have noted with interest how the management of Tigo Sri Lanka have downplayed the use of 3G technology for the time being. They have said that the technology is not mature and all else. Are they just making excuses for not grabbing a 3G license which was quite costly mind you or is it a really genuine picture of 3G? 3G has been successful to a certain extent and then has been unsuccessful and has been in instances become over hyped. Certain European operators have experienced this problem. But then this is Sri Lanka and not Europe and the 3G market may be different here. The prices of entry level 3G products are dropping and as we have seen in Sri Lanka the prices of the high end 3G phones will come down. There are some really cheap 3G products in Pettah too.

The major application of 3G at the moment is video calling which is only possible if both ends are equipped with 3G phones and the odds of that happening at the moment is very low. Then there is the ability to transfer high speed data. This high speed is not as high speed as DSL, etc but then when you are on the move, what are the odds that you will be able to have access to a DSL terminal or a Wifi access point. Oh also it is not guaranteed that the areas will be covered by Wimax services. Your 3G phone will become handy then if the network is 3G enabled in the location or else it is back to the good old cyber cafe.

The major reason why 3G was slow to develop is the lack of applications other than Data Speed and Video Calling. At the moment the applications are being developed.

Two major mobile networks Mobitel and Dialog GSM have gone into 3G with the latter carrying out expanding their 3G network and the former carrying out 3G testing in Kandy and the rollout will commence this year. At the moment Hutch Sri Lanka is totally hush about 3G – well at least I have not heard anything. Anyway I am not so sure whether Hutch is contemplating moving out of the Sri Lankan market since Hutch sold shares of Hutch India to Vodafone.

I for one am certain that my next mobile phone will be 3G even it has to be a entry level 3G phone, hopefully it is a highend one though. It won’t be long until we see the real impact of 3G on the Sri Lankan market.

Janantha Says:

Feb 21, 2007 at 12:45 am

Interesting point you have made there.. I think the driving force for a successful rollout of a service is to get the evaluation right. In the UK all the latest Mobile technology are tested in the Cayman Islands. They trialled both 3G and HSPDA there. What they did was they provided the handsets for the local people who are living there. as the local population was managable for handset deployement. they asked interested parties to sign up for the trial. The handsets were free give aways but i think they got them all back. Afterwards they told the people about the services they offer via 3G like for e.g. Location based services using interactive maps… People then used the applications they offered and gave feeback, and also some people asked for newer applications to be developed. So the operators interviewed the people and basically did a requirement analysis.

I’m assuming tigo didn’t do this but i think dialog use this procedure as they are well aware of the repercussions made by not correctly doing a requirement analysis.

First of all they should do a trial of this service and attempt to cusomly build services for Lankan community. Then they should fully deploy the service.

Also relating to speeds. If you have a 3G UMTS phone and the signal is weak it will automatically switch back to 2.5G GSM. Because it has QoS attribute attached to it.

Another good thing about 3G is that the cell to cell handover will be much more smoother than 2.5G where you get interruptions or at times yuo get completely disconnected when moving from a cell to cell.

Executioner Says:

Mar 2, 2007 at 2:22 am

Good article, I wonder why cant GPRS has all the effect of 3G while not being it?

Rasika Says:

Oct 20, 2007 at 7:41 pm

The biggest advantage of 3G, is its capabilities with data. EDGE is too slow. I my self is a very heavy data user, always on the move. Since WiFi spots are quite rare in SL, its really hard to be connected while on the move. EDGE is fine for some data exchange..but then comes the bills. I hope these ISP’s realize that the market right now is for FLAT charges, since no one charges by the hour/bytes in the world, except in sri lanka.

I have a N95-3, which i bought recently, and i love to use this tiny app called “fring”, one of the many freely available VOIP clients for mobile. Sadly, i only use it at office and at home, because no wifi anywhere else. It has builtin support for many IM clients plus skype and googletalk!. Well there’s alot more applications that you can use on a smartphone (symbian), that uses the internet, but well most users are discouraged to use any of them…because it costs alot to use GPRS/EDGE.

Chris Says:

Sep 14, 2008 at 7:52 am

You have raised an interesting point of view…I am working on a first degree assignment on 3G… Did you come across any details regarding the market size of 3G in Sri Lanka? or Number of 3G mobile phone holders in Sri Lanka?

amaranath Says:

Nov 7, 2008 at 11:26 am

i am looking for 3G SKYPE mobile phone in sri lanka.if you know pls let me know that who is dealer in sri lanka.

Fan Says:

Nov 10, 2008 at 12:44 pm

its right, in most part of the world, peer-to-peer 3G video calling has been a failure. but I came across a nice video services by Mobitel. all I had to do was make a video call to 555 using my 3G phone. that included services like dial and watch mobile television, video sms etc. I think thats quite innnovative and a good alternative for person to person video calling.