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Lanka
Bell’s Rs. 3 b link to ‘FLAG’ goes live
Telecom
giant takes quantum leap into the realm of enterprise solutions
with country’s first truly global undersea cable
A
Rs 3 billion investment by Lanka Bell to link Sri Lanka to
the world’s largest private undersea fibre optic cable
system will bring unrestricted broadband access to the local
telecommunications sector and elevate the country’s leading
CDMA operator to a major enterprise solutions provider, the
company said.
Announcing that the Sri Lanka link to the ‘Falcon’
segment of the FLAG Telecom cable has now gone live, Lanka
Bell which owns the cable’s Sri Lanka Landing Station
as well as capacity rights, said the country gaining access
to only its second international cable network and a terabit
private undersea cable system would open up a vista of new
opportunities for growth in voice and data solutions and enable
the extension of high speed Internet to remote parts of the
island.
“Our initial decision to partner with Reliance Globalcom
of the Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group to extend the Falcon cable
segment from Trivandrum to Colombo was in no small measure
motivated by patriotism,” Lanka Bell Managing Director
Prasad Samarasinghe disclosed. “Now, with the project
completed, we are ready to maximise to the fullest, the commercial
potential that the cable brings to Sri Lanka in the form of
global voice, Internet solutions, managed bandwidth solutions
based on multi protocol Label Switching (MPLs), International
Private Leased Circuits (IPLCs) and value added services .”
He said the 1.2 Terabit cable laid at a cost of US $ 27 million
would provide adequate bandwidth capacity for many years,
and enable Lanka Bell and other telecommunications companies
to offer a wide range of business solutions to Sri Lanka’s
corporate sector.
“We have taken a quantum leap virtually overnight, into
a new paradigm of secure high speed data solutions that will
enable Sri Lanka to become a hub for business process outsourcing
and data management,” Mr. Samarasinghe said, adding that
Lanka Bell planned to roll out several new services in these
areas in the weeks and months ahead.
Lanka Bell’s General Manager Enterprise & International
Business Mansoor Rishard said the company had already set
up the infrastructure for BPO services such as Call Centres,
Process Management solutions, International Data Centres (IDC)
and standard as well as customised IT & Telecom solutions.
“The opportunities are literally limitless,” he
said. “For Lanka Bell, the arrival of the cable means
that the company has evolved into a total solutions group
that can serve the information and data management needs of
enterprise clients not just in Sri Lanka but in any part of
the world that is linked by the cable.”
Dimantha Fernando - Senior Manager, International Services
added: “Lanka Bell would be connected to the 65,000 KM
long FLAG global network across all five continents. This
undersea cable would enable us to offer direct global connectivity
and a complete end to end solution with guaranteed reliability.
The core benefit of this project would be high speed, high
bandwidth and International connectivity at an affordable
price. Enhancement of services would significantly improve
investment recovery since it is capacity based. The FLAG network
provides direct coverage and seamless connectivity between
major telecom hubs, business markets and high growth economies
across all continents.”
The Falcon segment of the FLAG cable links the Middle East,
a part of Africa, India, Sri Lanka and the Maldives to the
global FLAG network, which comprises of 66 Landing Stations
in more than 50 countries, the highest number of PoP (Points
of Presence)on a global submarine Fibre Optic cable network.
The cable enables crystal clear international connectivity
around the globe, linking key business markets in Asia, the
Middle East, Europe and USA.
The cable’s owner Reliance Globalcom is a division of
Reliance Communications and spearheads the Global Telecom
operations of India’s largest Integrated Telecom Service
Provider. The company serves over 1000 enterprises, 200 carriers
and 1.4 million retail customers in 50 countries across five
continents. Reliance Globalcom provides a suite of wholesale
services under “Reliance Flag” the world’s
largest private undersea cable system spanning 65,000 kms
seamlessly integrated with Reliance Communications’ 110,000
kms of domestic optic fibre to provide a robust Global Service
Delivery Platform connecting 37 key business markets in India,
the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and the U.S. through an overlay
low-latency, global MPLS-based IP network.
The only wholly Sri Lankan owned company in the telecommunications
sector, Lanka Bell is the second largest ‘fixed line’
provider in the country with nearly a million subscribers.
The company was established in 1997 with an initial investment
of US$ 150 million and was the pioneer of CDMA technology
in Sri Lanka. Lanka Bell has invested more than Rs 6 billion
to date in its operations in Sri Lanka.
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