Whilst Sri Lanka’s mobile market has experienced strong growth over the last six years, Slow growth is predicted over the next five years to 2023, a recent report titled ‘Sri Lanka Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband Market Growth, Analysis, Challenges and Industry Key Players’ done by WiseGuyResearch Consultants (Pvt) Ltd highlights.

“The market will be constrained from higher growth due to very strong local competition and a highly saturated mobile market” the report notes adding that the market is now moving from 4G towards 5G mobile services. According to the report Dialog Axiata has carried out a ‘5G’ network capability trial with technology partners Ericsson and Huawei in Colombo. The demonstration included a range of 5G solutions including Massive MIMO, cloud radio and IoT-based smart parking and real time 4K video streaming. Dialog Axiata has claimed South Asia’s first launch of a NB-IoT-enabled network supporting IoT solutions such as Connected Home and Car Connect. Mobitel has completed a further round of proof-of-concept (PoC) tests of LTE-Advanced Pro (LTE-A Pro) technology in Colombo. Sri Lanka has seen a very strong increase in mobile broadband penetration over the past six years, driven by a rising level of 4G mobile subscribers. However, the mobile broadband market is still at an early stage of development with penetration well below most other developed Asian countries. Strong growth is predicted over the next five years to 2023.

The report also notes that Sri Lanka’s makes significant progress in its IoT ventures.

“In 2018 the government’s Board of Investment of Sri Lanka formally approved a significant investment for network expansion and upgrade work on 4G mobile and fixed broadband services” the report points out.

The analysis also highlights that fixed broadband penetration in Sri Lanka remains very low mainly due to the dominance of the mobile platform and the limited and declining number of fixed lines is restricting more widespread development of fixed broadband. However, the market has grown strongly over the past five years from a very small base. Over the next five years to 2023 strong growth is expected to continue. The report could be requested by logging into www.wiseguyreports.com according to the company.

- Reporting by Devendra Francis