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Lanka Belll to represent country at international ICT competition |
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| Lanka Bell Director Prasad Samarasinghe (3rd from left) with
the company's award-winning IT team. |
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Pioneer CDMA operator's IT Team wins two national software awards chosen to compete at APICTA
One of two innovative software solutions developed by the IT team of Lanka Bell, Sri Lanka's CDMA pioneer, will compete against similar products from 16 other countries at the seventh international Asia Pacific ICT Awards (APICTA) in Singapore later this month.
The product, 'Lanka Bell SMS Gateway' was short-listed to compete at this prestigious event following its success at the National Best Quality Software Awards hosted by the Sri Lanka Chapter of the British Computer Society (BCS) last month.
SMS Gateway, used to launch the first ever fixed-line SMS banking application in Sri Lanka won the Bronze award in the Communications category at these awards and was one of the few products selected to represent Sri Lanka at the APICTA competition from 26th to 29th November.
The second Lanka Bell Product that was recognised at the national competition was 'Bell Soft Telco Solutions' an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application which won a merit award.
"These awards reflect the innovativeness, creativity and skills of Lanka Bell's IT team," said the company's Managing Director Suren Goonewardene. "Behind the success of any Telco today is a highly skilled IT capability, and we are proud to represent Sri Lanka at the forthcoming competition."
He said Lanka Bell's SMS Gateway is already being used by a wide spectrum of customers in Sri Lanka. This application enables the conversion of email in to SMS for transmission to phones and vice versa. As a result, it makes checking account and credit card balances, exchange rates and ATM location details, as well as fund transfers and bill payments possible from phones. It also facilitates service registration by SMS, SMS notification, SMS attendance and job ticket for field staff among others and has the flexibility to run on any hardware operating system and database.
Lanka Bell's innovative use of CDMA technology has resulted in many value-additions to the company's subscribers. Earlier this year, Lanka Bell became the first 'fixed-line' telecommunications company in Sri Lanka to offer voice-based short messaging with the launch of 'Bell Voice SMS' a unique fun service that enables owners of Lanka Bell CDMA phones to record send voice messages to any network, fixed or mobile, for the first time in Sri Lanka.
One of the latest developments at Lanka Bell is its partnership with FLAG Telecom, a subsidiary of India's Reliance Communications for a US$ 27 million undersea cable project that will result in high speed data and internet access and far superior quality IDD facilities to several thousands of customers all over the country. It will enable crystal clear international connectivity around the globe, linking key business markets in Asia, the Middle East, Europe and USA. Scheduled to be completed in 2007, the project will enable Lanka Bell to offer direct global connectivity and a complete end-to-end solution via FLAG Telecom's FALCON cable system, which is the first terabit private undersea cable system in Sri Lanka.
The only 100 per cent Sri Lankan owned company in the telecommunications sector, Lanka Bell is the largest CDMA operator in the country with a subscriber base that exceeds 700,000. The company was established in 1997 with an initial investment of US$ 150 million and was the pioneer of CDMA technology in Sri Lanka. Lanka Bell has invested more than Rs 6 billion in its operations and today offers the lowest call charges in the local market. |
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