Mobitel Pvt. Ltd. (Merged with Sri Lanka Telecom)

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Mobitel was awarded a 20-year license to operate a nationwide cellular service in Srilanka under a BOT agreement between Sri Lanka Telecom (on behalf of the government of Sri Lanka) and Telstra Australia in April 1993. Mobitel was initially a joint venture between Telstra (60%) and Sri Lanka Telecom (40%), a partly state-owned company. In November 2002, Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) increased its stake to 100% by buying out Telstra's share. Mobitel is now a fully owned subsidiary of SLT. In 1994, the license fee for all cellular operators was set to 1.2% of annual investment and 0.36% of annual revenues. Prior to that, the license fee was 1% of annual investment and 0.3% of annual revenues. Telstra invested US$7.6 million in the company between 1993-1996. In 1999, Mobitel awarded Ericsson a US$20 million contract to digitize the AMPS wireless network. The equipment supplier was Ericsson. The company was initially licensed to operate AMPS 800 mobile phone services. Mobitel decided to switch to the GSM mobile standard and the first phase of the GSM roll out was expected to be launched in the second quarter of 2005. In March 2004, Mobitel had raised US$ 86 million in a seven-year loan to fund its GSM roll out. Standard Chartered Bank was the lead arranger of the loan that was denominated in a combination of rupees and dollars. The total investment for the GSM rollout is estimated at around $200 million with the balance sourcing expected through a Swedish credit agency. As of December 31, 2004, Mobitel had 285,000 customers. Mobitel competed with three other mobile operators - Lanka Cellular Services (Pvt) Limited, MTN Networks, and Celltel Lanka Limited. Related Project - Sri Lanka Telecom http://www.slt.lk/data/aboutslt/aboutslt.htm http://www.slt.lk/data/investor/021areports.htm http://www.ntt.co.jp/about_e/corporatedata.html