Sri Lanka Telecom awards ZTE USD27m fibre contract

Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) has awarded a long-awaited LKR3 billion (USD27 million) fibre-optic network rollout contract to China’s ZTE Corp as part of the national ‘i-Sri Lanka’ project, reports The Business Times. The i-Sri Lanka project was launched to enhance, upgrade and expand high speed infrastructure, bringing fibre closer to end-users through fibre nodes, reducing the length of copper last-mile connections. Through the programme SLT plans to launch broadband speeds of above 20Mbps for a large proportion of its fixed line customers over a three-year period. In addition, the fibre expansion will bring ‘PeoTV’ IP-based multi channel TV services to many SLT fixed line customers for the first time.