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Sri Lanka TELECOMMUNICATIONS
In 1988 Sri Lanka's domestic and international
telecommunications services were operated by the Posts and
Telecommunications Department, of the Ministry of Posts and
Telecommunications. Communications with most countries were
available through telephone and telex services; an international
direct dialing service was introduced in 1980 and by 1987 was in
operation in most parts of the country. Advances in the
telecommunications field, however, had not kept pace with the
growth in the economic sector occurring since the 1970s. In the
1980s, the quality and availability of telecommunications
services in Sri Lanka was average compared to other Asian
countries, but poor compared to other parts of the world. With
approximately 106,500 telephones in use in 1986, the telephone
network was extremely overloaded, the exchanges nearing or
exceeding capacity levels. Line congestion and long waiting lists
for telephone connections were common. Telephone lines were
concentrated in urban areas, with over 60 percent located in the
Colombo area, which houses only 5 percent of Sri Lanka's
population. Direct dialing was available within Colombo and to
some major towns, but operator assistance was necessary for other
connections, which often led to long delays.
The Sri Lanka Broadcasting Corporation operated radio
services, and the Sri Lanka Rupavahini Corporation and the
Independent Television Network operated television services in
the 1980s. In 1987 almost 700 hours of weekly radio programming
were broadcast domestically in Sinhala, Tamil, and English.
Programs were transmitted internationally via a shortwave station
at Ekala, and domestically through twenty-four medium-wave
stations and FM stations located in five cities throughout Sri
Lanka (see
table 9, Appendix A). Over 2 million radio sets were
in use in the mid-1980s. Foreign service broadcasts to Asia,
Europe, Africa, and the Middle East were transmitted from Ekala
in eight languages (English, Hindi, Kannada, Malayalam, Nepali,
Sinhala, Tamil, and Telugu). Independent foreign broadcasts
transmitting programs from Sri Lanka included the Deutsche Welle
station at Trincomalee, and Voice of America radio station at
Colombo, and the religious stations of Trans-World Radio and
Adventist Radio.
Television transmissions began in 1979 and by 1986 there were
some 350,000 receivers in place. Programs were broadcast over
three channels in Sinhala, English, and Tamil for four hours
daily via the main transmitter at Pidurutalagala, Nuwara Eliya
District, and two relay stations at Kokkaville in northern
Batticaloa District and Kandy. The Independent Television Network
broadcast over one channel from the station at
Wickramasinghapura.
International telecommunication services were provided mainly
by the Padukka satellite station and the South East Asia-Middle
East-Western Europe submarine cable system. The earth station,
commissioned in 1975, continued to provide international
telephone and television services via the Indian Ocean Region
INTELSAT satellite. The submarine cable station located at
Colombo was commissioned in 1984. It extended from Singapore to
France via six countries (Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Djibouti, Saudi
Arabia, Egypt, and Italy) and provided Sri Lanka with
international telephone communications.
Sri Lanka was planning to invest Rs2.5 billion in
telecommunications in the late 1980s. The advances were slated in
the telephone network and other telecommunications services.
Data as of October 1988
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