The number of internet subscribers has grown sharply in the second quarter of 2020 as people and firms transitioned most of their work virtual, triggering more demand for high- speed broadband internet connections in Sri Lanka.
According to data, both fixed and mobile broadband connections grew by 10.9 percent to 13.2 million connections from April through June from 11.9 million connections a year ago.
During the second quarter alone, the number of internet connections has grown by 216,326, indicating that people have subscribed for more internet connections for work and play as much of their routine shifted online after the pandemic forced people to shelter at home. Locally as well as globally, telecommunication companies—broadly the technology sector— have emerged as winners during the pandemic as people were glued to their screens once their cities and countries were
locked down.
The Unites States stock market is thus far mostly powered by the technology stocks such as Amazon, facebook, Microsoft, Netflix and the likes as people shopped online, in-person interactions moved virtual, while work and entertainment happened mostly online creating more demand for cloud service providers such as Microsoft and video streaming services
such as Netflix.
Meanwhile in-person meetings and class room education shifted to virtual rooms which were conducted via video conferencing platforms such as Zoom, whose stock surged at phenomenal levels during this year as daily downloads skyrocketed.
Telecommunication providers cut rates and came up with generous data bundles wooing both existing and new customers.
Meanwhile, the telephone penetration in Sri Lanka has fallen to 136.3 connections per 100 persons by the end of June from 155.3 connection in March and 160.9 connections a year ago.
Sri Lanka became an early winner of the liberalisation of its telecommunications sector in South Asia during 1990s with the privatisation of the State-owned Sri Lanka Telecom PLC, as it invited many private sector players to bring the prices drastically down in a fairly shorter period of time.
That reduced the cost of doing business at a time when road infrastructure was poor.
By the end-June 2020, there were 2.328 million fixed line telephones and 27.679 million cellular phones in use compared to 2.325 million and 31.876 million respectively by end-March 2020.