The national telecommunication service provider, Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) was proud to provide extensive communications and technical solutions to power the 2012 Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR) held in Colombo this week, under the theme of “Why Regulate in a Networked Society”.

The GSR-12 Regulators Association Meeting (RA) and the International Telecommunication Union’s (ITU) Chief Regulatory Officers’ (CRO) Meeting were held in Colombo, Sri Lanka, from 1st to 4th October 2012. The ITU’s Global Symposium for Regulators (GSR) is the pre-eminent international event for the regulatory community around the world and was organized by the ITU in collaboration with, and hosted by the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) under the patronage of His Excellency Mahinda Rajapaksa, President of Sri Lanka. The event was chaired by Mr. Lalith Weeratunga, Chairman, TRCSL as well and Chairman, GSR.

SLT communication and technical solutions contributed to the success of this high profile event including: Wi-Fi in conference locations, LAN for communication among ITU and conference officials and delegates, Multiple Internet Lines (ILLs) for high speed internet connectivity at 30Mbps bandwidth, audio visual language interpretation supporting 6 different languages.

Speaking on the occasion, His Excellency the President Mahinda Rajapaksa noted: "It is a technology that needs to be handled with great care - imposing more duties and responsibilities on parents for the guidance of their children. The wonders of ICT should not alienate our children from what is best in our culture and traditional values." He also stated: “As Sri Lanka moves ahead in ICT, we have set in motion a plan to develop a policy and regulatory framework for Next Generation Network (NGN) and to have a National Broadband Policy before the end of this year. We see the importance of broadband connectivity throughout the land for our people to fully benefit from the speedy advances in ICT”.

GSR Chairman Mr. Lalith Weeratunga added: “The global economy, underpinned by spectacular digital growth, today offers virtually unlimited scope for socio–economic development, rapid delivery of services, expeditious conduct of research, superior management of industrial processes, and more importantly, opportunities for tapping the creative and innovative potential of humankind as never before. The rapid explosion of broadband and concomitant acceptance in principle of broadband as the right of every citizen in our networked societies, places on regulators an obligation to devise effectual regulation that will allow greater freedom for investment, competition and dynamism, while at the same time minimizing any possible negative consequences that may flow from the exercise of such freedom.”

Commenting further, Mr Greg Young, CEO of SLT, said: “We are dedicated to making broadband affordable, connecting every home to broadband and bringing people online to facilitate national GDP growth. By upgrading the nation’s optical fibre network, the SLT ‘i-Sri Lanka’ initiative delivers high quality, high speed broadband. Further, SLT will deliver National Backbone Network (NBN) services as the NBN Operator. As we eliminate historic legacy platforms this will cascade to a reduction in the cost of maintenance of these aging platforms, improved efficiencies, faster service delivery, increased speed and performance, all implemented with ultimate customer service excellence. SLT is creating a network and capability to empower Sri Lanka as South Asia’s economic hub”.