Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel, the national mobile service provider held its position over other telecommunications providers in Sri Lanka winning the “Best Consumer Pull Award” for Sri Lanka, for the third consecutive year at the latest CEO Conclave Awards 2008, in India.

The CEO Conclave is organised by ‘Voice and Data’ one of the premier and leading Information and Communications Magazines in the region. The CEO Conclave Awards is the climax of an annual conference that attracts top and leading telecommunications regulators, operators, vendors and VAS and content players from the SAARC region who actively deliberate and brainstorm cutting edge developments in Information and communications technology.

The two-day conference was held at Ramoji Film City in Hyderabad, India. The conference was as usual well-attended and as expected industry leaders made presentations and service providers and regulators brainstormed future developments. The highlight of course was the CEO Conclave Awards at which Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel yet again claimed the Best Consumer Pull Award for Sri Lanka.

Winners of the CEO Conclave Awards must meet stringent criteria and are subjected to a process of qualitative evaluation encompassing quality of service and customer experience, attractiveness of tariff structure, service innovation among several other features. In judging for Best Consumer Pull Award category, the maximum consumer pull power was analysed based on the simple virtue of losing less number and adding a higher number in proportion to the current base, from among the different players in the industry.

Roshan Kaluarachchi, General Manager – Marketing, of Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel, accepted the award on behalf of the company.

Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel holds the distinction of being the first Super 3.5G network in South Asia.

Sri Lanka Telecom Mobitel, the national mobile services provider, is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sri Lanka Telecom. In January 2004, the company launched its fully- fledged 2.5G GSM network that is EDGE/GPRS enabled and designed to operate on dual band. In December 2007 the company launched its 3.5G HSPA network - the first Super 3.5G network in South Asia. Investments committed to date in the 3.5G/2.5G networks and service offering amounts to over US$ 300 mn. The company plans to increase its number of base stations to 2000 by the end the first quarter of 2009.