Effective from last Wednesday, every incoming IDD call of a Lanka Bell phone will earn its user 50 cents for every minute of the call, regardless of duration, country of origin or how many calls are received for a day.
During a media briefing this week, Lanka Bell Managing Director Prasad Samarasinghe said this is the first time in Sri Lanka that a service provider has paid its customers for using a utility that could result in some of them earning as much as Rs.1500 per month on incoming IDD calls which may also wipe out their outgoing call bills.
Mr. Samarasinghe described this payment as a 'passing on' of the benefits of the company's Rs.3 billion investment to connect Sri Lanka to the FLAG undersea fibre optic cable network. The monies earned from the payback scheme will be credited to phone balances in the case of prepaid connections or set against the monthly bills of post-paid connections, resulting in substantial savings to the one million plus Lanka Bell subscriber base, he said.
Mr. Samarasinghe added that over the past three and a half years, the company increased its subscribers from 50,000 to over a million and attributed this growth to Lanka Bell's 'Sri Lankaness', being the only truly Sri Lankan telecom operator in the country. He added that even though there has been approximately a 5% growth on the company's top line, the bottom-line remains tough and stagnant.
He explained that the rationale behind the payback plan was to show the average Sri Lankan phone user how being connected via Lanka Bell to FLAG, described by the company as the 'world's largest terabit fibre optic undersea cable system' could make a tangible difference in their lives. The first step was an across-the-board reduction in tariffs for outgoing IDD calls that has resulted in Lanka Bell offering the lowest IDD rate of seven rupees a minute. Now, incoming IDD calls which have always been free, will actually help reduce usage costs further, he said. |
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