History

Mobitel was incorporated in 1993 as the second mobile-telephony provider to enter the Sri Lanka market. Originally a collaboration between Sri Lanka Telecom and Telstra Australia, Mobitel has been wholly owned by SLT since November 2002.

Following the successful implementation and operation of an AMPS/TDMA network in the country, Mobitel launched its GSM operations in January 2004, with the deployment of a fully fledged GSM network in the 1800 MHz band which is EDGE/GPRS enabled. In 2005 and 2006, Mobitel traded the 800 MHz band for slots made available from the 900 MHz spectrum. With this enhancement, Mobitel embarked on a field trial of 3G at the 1st International Buddhist Conference held in 2006, setting the stage for the launch of its 3G services in Sri Lanka.

Investments committed to date for this state-of-the-art technology to provide 3G and GSM totals over US$ 200 million. This includes increasing the present number of base stations from 600 to 1,500 by the end of this year.