SLTData:
Mining an Untapped Market
The demand for data services is likely to grow phenomenally
in the next few years. Internet accessibility is growing and
its potential to facilitate the exchange of information and
commerce has barely been tapped. SLT is spreading its wings
into the nonvoice sector with great anticipation. The market
is largely untapped and the revenue potential is huge.
SLT is exploring a variety of new technologies through its fibre
optic infrastructure to provide IP-based services such as SLT Broadband,
IP-VPN and Internet Data Centres. These new services are aimed
at the high usage residential and corporate customers and will
increase our network utilisation.
SLT provides domestic leased circuits under the name of SLTData.
It offers data circuits of capacities ranging from 64 kbps up
to 2 Mbps and also multiples of 2 Mbps. Our services include
domestic and International Private Leased Circuits (IPLCs),
Frame Relay (FR) circuits, Internet Leased Lines (ILLs), Direct
Inward Dialling (DID) and Direct Outward Dialling (DOD) connections.
Customers include mobile operators, data service operators,
Internet Service Providers (ISPs), software developers, banks
and other large institutions. At the end of 2003 we had approximately
3,500 data service customers.
IP-VPN: Integrating Voice, Video and
Data
Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) have emerged as a modern solution
for meeting the challenge of integrating data, voice and video
traffic in an easily manageable, scalable, and flexible network.
VPNs provide economical, efficient and secure solutions for
modern businesses.
It is to meet this challenge that SLT launched its IP-VPN service
in 2003. SLT has built a Managed Private Leased Circuit (MPLC)
based IP-VPN network covering almost all commercial locations
in the Western Province (including Katunayake and Kandy). SLT
now offers IP-VPN services to virtually any location within
Sri Lanka by providing access through leased lines, frame relay
or Digital Subscriber Lines (DSL).
IP-VPN was launched commercially in September 2003. SLT plans
to expand the IP backbone geographically within Sri Lanka and
to extend its IP-VPN services globally while improving the value
added services it provides.
The Managed Private Leased Circuit (MPLC) protocol has emerged
as the preferred protocol. It combines the security and performance
of Frame Relay Services with the flexibility and cost-effectiveness
of IP.
SLT-iDC: Hosting and Managing Data Securely
In December 2003 SLT soft launched its state-of-the-art Internet
Data Centre (iDC). SLT-iDC is a novel approach pioneered by
SLT, which provides a comprehensive facility to house, host
and manage data for business customers. The centre is on par
with similar centres in other parts of the world and is housed
at the SLT Headquarters in Colombo.
Many business enterprises are outsourcing their in-house data
management facilities to dedicated Data Centres. Maintaining
a Data Centre within an enterprise can be a costly exercise
and it makes financial sense to outsource such a function to
a dedicated centre so long as security can be guaranteed. It
is this market that SLT-iDC hopes to tap.
SLT-iDC will provide solutions to corporate customers to store
and maintain their business systems, applications and data while
guaranteeing the highest levels of confidentiality. iDC commence
commercial operations in January 2004.
