Jingle bells from Dialog

By Natasha Gunaratne

Sri Lanka’s largest mobile operator Dialog Telekom PLC announced a massive reduction in outgoing call and sms charges from yesterday. In a statement, Dialog announced that the reduction in charges was in celebration of reaching 4 million customers and will significantly reduce communications costs for one in five Sri Lankans who now used Dialog.

The company claimed Dialog charges would now be amongst the lowest in South Asia. Dialog said it was slashing outgoing-call charges on Dialog Prepaid (Kit) and Dialog postpaid packages. All Kit users would now enjoy large scale reductions in peak time call charges, including a 43% reduction in Dialog-to-Dialog call rates at peak time. Post-paid call rates would also be reduced across peak, off peak and late night time brackets.

The company said the reductions would mean customer bills would be reduced by amounts ranging from 14% to 71%. Dialog said Dialog-to-Dialog SMS charges had been slashed by more than 50 percent and would now cost only one rupee a message. Dialog-to-Dialog MMS charges had also been reduced by 71% from 7 rupees a message to 2 rupees a message, the company said.

Dialog Telekom has also upgraded the current Kit My 5 Prepaid Package to Kit My 10 where prepaid customers could nominate 10 numbers to which further rate concessions of up to 50% would apply.

Dialog Chief Marketing Officer Nushad Perera said he did not expect the reduction in charges to generate a large increase in Dialog customers, but the company hoped to maintain its average monthly growth of 1000 customers. Mr. Perera said the reduction in charges was not connected to the entry of Bharti Airtel, one of India’s largest mobile phone and fixed network operator. This company would be the fifth mobile phone operator in Sri Lanka.

“We are not really worried about Airtel. I think it is different. We are more worried about number two and number three,” he said referring to Mobitel and Tigo, formerly known as Celltel.