Dialog Axiata PLC, the widest network in Sri Lanka, as part of their expansion launched its 4,000th network tower in Thihawa village, Kurunegala, to further reach the rural communities in the area.
Dialog has added 515 new towers to the network during the pandemic period reaching 4000 mobile 4G sites in its network, the highest ever tower count recorded in Sri Lanka with an investment of about Rs 50 billion.
Dialog is the nation’s largest foreign direct investor with a total investment of USD 2.8 Billion to date and infrastructure investments of USD 207 Million planned for 2021. The ongoing investments are part of the USD 254.1 million investment committed with the Board of Investments in February 2020.
Dialog made use of Green Field towers in rapidly expanding its coverage to reach deep rural communities and the Lamp pole solutions to cater to urgent capacity requirements in dense areas.
Dialog will continue to enhance coverage to deep rural communities through another 450 towers, including TRCSL’s “Gamata Sanniwedanaya” project, in the next 6 months, targeting more than 95% population coverage by end of 2021.
Dialog’s network accommodated more than 100% growth in mobile data traffic & more than 200% growth in fixed data traffic during the pandemic period, where the network carries more than 60% of the total mobile data usage of Sri Lanka. To meet the surge in demand, Dialog upgraded the capacity of 2,831 mobile 4G towers and 1,816 fixed broadband towers during the pandemic period and are targeting to enhance the capacity of more than 75% of the sites in the network by the end of the year.
Dialog also made more than twofold enhancements to the spectrum assigned to mobile 4G network by investing in 40MHz spectrum in the 2,600MHz band and re-allocating 13 MHz of frequency previously used for 2G and 3G to 4G broadband with the approval of TRCSL. This is a significant enhancement to Dialog’s spectrum assignment for 4G Broadband, which will enable the network to deliver superior performance, despite catering to a larger customer base and traffic growth.
Furthermore, to ensure that no child is left behind, Dialog is facilitating 100,000 schoolchildren in need with Data Scholarships through its ‘NanaDiri Data Scholarship’ programme to support their online learning endeavours. The Company also introduced ultra-low-cost data packages as low as 25 GB of Zoom & Microsoft teams usage for just Rs. 165 a month, which aims to cater to the education requirements of the children of marginalised and rural communities.
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