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TRC delays Suntel low-cost proposal Mahinda Ramasundara, Technical Director - Suntel Ltd. referring to recent comments by Minister of Posts and Telecommunications D.M.Jayaratne of a backlog of 700,000 applications for telephones, said the company has the capability to meet these demands but is still awaiting regulatory approval nearly two years after submitting the proposal. "We think we can cover an unmet demand of 250,000 - 300,000 considering the other operators are also going into rural areas. We have prepared plans to go into uncovered areas - urban, sub-urban and rural areas with cheaper technology that has more features. Everything depends on regulatory approvals," said Ramsundara. The company's technical head explained that though Suntel started with a certain technology it has become necessary to change to provide advanced features and "get a good price per line". Telecommunications technology is developing very fast; there are cheaper technologies with more features. It's high time we changed (to cheaper technology)", he said. Currently approved technology costs the wireless local loop operator US$900 per line whereas the new technology could cost between US$200 to US$250 per line. Further, at the current investment per line Suntel charges the subscriber Rs. 17,888.25 inclusive of tax and a monthly rental of Rs. 350 with no minimum commitments. The new purchase price after approval has not been decided. However, the prevailing pricing structure indicates that this figure could be much less. "The technology we have chosen for rural areas is very attractive. We are confident of providing a phone at a reasonable price. We know the ROI (Return On Investment) will be low and affordability is an issue in these areas", he added. The proposed technology will offer basic voice telephony and dial-up Internet access with provision for higher data services. It has already been accepted globally with installations on a wide scale in rural India and China. Asked where the delay could be, he said that in his opinion TRC has not decided on the allocation of the frequency spectrum. Suntel has requested for capacity in the 1900 band and 800 band. Ramasundara said the 1900 band has the capacity while the 800 band would need some reallocation, but TRC is undecided as to how it wishes to allocate these frequencies. Suntel, which has 100,000 subscribers and 160 base stations, is also facing a problem of peak capacity. As the demand is high, Suntel would run out of capacity by December if this application is not approved. H.P. Karunarathne, Deputy Director - License Administration of the TRC when contacted acknowledged the application has been with them for a long time and that the request is being considered. Asked for a time period, he said the outcome would be known in one month's time. EPT
sees local market opportunity "Irrespective of the tender, we have been talking to most local banks and have been received very warmly. We are here for the long-haul," said Brian Squires, Chief Executive Officer, EPT. EPT's cheque clearance and processing solution is unique as it acquires all information on a cheque in a "one-pass" through the scanner system whereas most other systems require more passes. This leads to a reduction in operational costs of up to 30% compared to conventional systems and also saves time. The combination of minimal investment, simplicity of use and a system to manage transition through a dynamic period of time delivers banks the ability to own and operate their own cheque processing operation with significant reductions in cost and complexity according to EPT officials. The system's modular format also provides customers the benefit of extending the system to be used for document imaging and data processing besides cheques. This with many other features such as web interfacing makes the system superior at a faction of the price of other systems in the market. In order to capitalize its market potential EPT has been spending time analyzing the market. The company has now formed local partnerships with Interblocks (Pvt) Ltd and IBM Sri Lanka for local software and hardware support. EPT is also a dominant player in the Asia Pacific market through ANZ Banking Group Ltd, a joint venture principal of the company that utilizes EPT solutions for all its global offices. In Australia, ANZ utilizes the system for its in-house processing of over 2.5 million cheques per day. Other customers include the Reserve Bank of Australia which has outsourced its cheque processing operations to EPT. The Lankaclear project is a joint venture of the Central Bank and other commercial banks for cheque imaging and truncation aimed at automation and improving efficiency of cheque processing in the country. Estimates indicate that the local market requirement for such a system is to process 250,000 cheques per day. Zeelabs
implements Aureos Capital global web portal The completion of this project was a high-point for the company having started off as an "incubatee" company with three employees four years ago at Conceptnursery.com, a local technology incubator. The Aureos web portal was one of the largest overseas project handled by Zeelabs while having worked with a few other international clients. The Aureos global portal to an ordinary visitor merely looks a website but has a lot of functionality built in for stakeholders such as deal management, etc. Zeelabs also has the distinction of providing hosting and other solutions to over 200 local companies. The company now has its focus set on overseas markets with strategic business units to provide industry solutions, hosting technologies and application development. Its product base comprises solutions for industrial washing plants, web designing, mobile messaging, online business card designing and ordering, live customer support via Internet, etc. The company has also acquired expertise in 3D technology with its recent acquisition of Temptation Technologies (Pvt) Ltd. Zeelabs web hosting solutions are preferred by its vast clientele due to its extensive features and complete autonomy and control extended to clients through a control panel. This allows customers to change information, look and feel of their websites via the web without having to contact the company. Further, the solutions are hosted in servers owned by Zeelabs and placed in leading data centres in USA for strategic reasons of greater technology. Zeelabs future focus would be offshore according to company officials, while continuing to service the local market requirements. The company today has 20 employees and is valued at Rs. 30 million, having grown purely from seed money invested into the company and without outside investments. Case
for online management of state schools When implementing a web based online school management system it is important to note that some administration and management activities of national schools and some provincial schools are carried out by the Ministry of Education while administration activities of other provincial schools are handled by provincial educational authorities. As such it may not be prudent to implement web based online school management systems independently at each school. It will be beneficial to design an IT structure based on the central role played by ministry of education and also the role played by provincial educational authorities. Gateway Consultancy Services, Colombo recently implemented a web based online school management system at Gateway International School. Such a Web based Online School Management System may have online functional subsystems for Student Information and Promotions, Human Resource Management, School Accounts, Teacher's Payroll Management, Educational web portal, Student assessments, reporting and transcripts, E-Learning, Text books of all grades in a downloadable format, Timetabling and Scheduling for each school, Past Students information for each school, Past Papers, Administration systems, Punctuality and Attendance Records, Student Non-Academic Records, Sports activities of each school, Planning and Communication, Library functions and administration, Stocks, Provincial educational activities, etc. The centralized structure of the web based online school management system will ensure the existence of a centralized computer database with regard to all school activities. For example information such as student details, teacher details, student attendance, sports activities, etc. for each school will be stored at the centralized computer database of the Ministry of Education, Battaramulla. At the click of a button the Secretary to the Ministry of Education or any other higher educational official will be able to find out extra curricular activities of a particular student from a school in Kandy. Since the proposed system is web based it will allow other stakeholders in the education process such as parents and teachers to access their student records online through an Internet web site. (The author is a former lecturer in banking at Institute of Bankers of Sri Lanka and Aquinas College of Higher Education, Colombo. He is an associate member of the Institute of Bankers of Sri Lanka and is presently reading for the LLB degree and BIT degree.)
News in Brief All data traffic is now being routed through the SEA-ME-WE-III cable according to Kapila Chandrasena, Chief Marketing Officer of SLT. The incumbent telecom operator has also decided to retain most of the additional bandwidth comprising various channels for redundancy purposes. This will be able to meet around 80% of the current bandwidth demand in case of future breakdowns. SLT lost connectivity to the undersea cable a fortnight ago as a result of the cable being damaged by a ship's anchor. The damage amounting to US$5 million is reportedly irrecoverable due to lack of evidence in identifying the alleged ship. Golden
Key launches MIMIX with improved functionality As a leading IT re-seller and IT Distribution companies, GKC and Ceylinco Networking Technologies Ltd (CNT) will market MIMIX for Windows in Sri Lanka. CNT focusing solely on Channel business and is a strong IT distribution company within the South Asia region. The Golden Key Company is Lakeview's Business partner in Sri Lanka for Business Availability solutions since 2000. MIMIX for Windows affords the same level of disaster recovery, high availability and continuous operations benefits of MIMIX for iSeries, which is widely used by some of the world's largest banks and financial service institutions, product manufacturers, telecommunications providers and insurance companies. The system automatically monitors for any data changes and sends those changes in real-time to the backup server or server cluster. MIMIX for Windows has already been put into full production at a number of companies and has even been credited with averting a downtime disaster for railroad firm Nuevo Central Argentino S.A. (NCA) in Argentina. Richard
Pieris chooses hSenid for its HRIS needs The system upon completion of implementation and training will enable the entire Richard Pieris Group to streamline its HR related processes and further increase efficiency and productivity of the Group. The time & attendance solution provided by hSenid includes several unique features such as allowing users to schedule shifts & rosters easily, handle complex calculations, accommodate multiple attendance patterns & other related requirements. The hSenid solution has the capability of gathering information from any electronic attendance device including magnetic readers, proximity scanners, bar codes, finger / palm / hand scanners etc. This system has the capacity to store all relevant information about employees and to perform a large variety of HR functions. hSenid Software International is an HRIS solution provider in Sri Lanka, specializing in HRM solutions, mobile applications, eCommerce & Communications solutions. The company has offices in the United States, Singapore and its R&D centre located in Colombo, Sri Lanka. |
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