Sri Lanka It's Happening

March 6, 2004

Except for a small part of colombo city limits the rest of the country has to choose between dialup and leased lines. This small area has has ADSL connectivity as a result many smaller software companies have relocated their offices.

Dialup connections are pathetically slow and a connection can only be obtained after several dialup attempts. Sadly this is true of virtually all the ISPs in the country. More often than not connections drop just in the middle of an important transfer. All this would be bearable if the local call charges didn't feel like daylight robbery. (To put things in perspective an oversees call is only slightly more expensive than a local call during peak hours)

As for leased lines, they usually come with outlandish setup costs, extremely high monthly fees and no guarantee of connectivity. You consider yourself lucky if you can download at 2 Kilo Bytes per second on your 64kbps leased line.

And getting onto support I once had the misfortune of speaking to a support executive (that's what the people who answer the phones call themselves) who had no idea what SMTP was.