Net Access

March 20, 2008 (LBO) – Sri Lanka's internet access quality through broadband within the local boundary is above regional thresholds but sparse local content drives users to access overseas sites at slower speeds, researchers said. "In the ISP (Internet Service Provider) domain from the user to ISP, we have found that the results are relatively healthy," says Chanuka Wattegama from LIRNEasia, a communications technology and regulation think tank.

The local speeds within Sri Lanka is comparatively higher to what users experience when accessing international web sites, web pages or servers that are located overseas.

On a Dialog Telekom internet line which provides 2Mbps download and 512Kbps upload speeds users experience speeds from a high of 1,967Kbps to a low of 1,372 Kbps, when downloading from their local Internet Service Provider (ISP).

Kbps is the measurement used to calculate speeds and stands for thousands of bits or kilobits per second.

For example, a song in the popular mp3 format that is around four MegaBytes can be downloaded within 16 seconds when users experience internet speeds of 1,967Kbps.

The speeds varied when test downloads were performed through Dialog internet connection from the popul