The Cabinet has approved a proposal for the Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka (TRCSL) to acquire spectrum and service-quality monitoring systems worth US$9.25 million, funded by the Asian Development Bank.
The procurement falls under the Digital Transformation Enhancement Project, for which the Ministry of Digital Economy and the Department of External Resources were cleared to partner with the ADB, EconomyNext reported.
What the money buys
Of the US$9.25 million in external funding, US$8 million goes to a spectrum management and monitoring system and US$1.25 million to a system for monitoring service quality and user experience.
“The Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka, a key implementing agency of this project, requires a spectrum management and monitoring system, as well as a system to monitor service quality and the quality of user experience,” Cabinet Spokesman Dr. Nalinda Jayatissa said.
On the larger component, Jayatissa said the government expects to establish “a fully integrated spectrum management system to manage the radio frequency spectrum efficiently and effectively, conduct continuous monitoring over it, and guarantee the necessary rights for spectrum users.”
The smaller component is the more consequential one for consumers. Jayatissa said the service-quality system will not be tied to a single vendor and will support interoperability, so that performance and user experience can be measured, analysed and reported across telecom networks rather than within one operator’s own reporting.
That matters because network performance in Sri Lanka has largely been measured by operators themselves. A vendor-neutral regulator-side tool would let the TRCSL compare operators directly on the same basis.
Context
The regulator’s existing spectrum management system is ageing. The Sunday Times reported on September 20 that the TRC planned to replace it next year — reporting that preceded this week’s Cabinet decision and points to the same procurement.
The government says the wider project is intended to support large-scale data storage and processing while keeping digital services reliable, affordable and uninterrupted.
No timetable for procurement or deployment was announced, and no vendor has been named.
A note on sourcing: this decision was announced at Tuesday evening’s post-Cabinet briefing. At the time of writing no other verified Sri Lankan newsroom had filed its own report of it, although several carried other decisions from the same briefing.
