Priyantha Edirisinghe is not one to shun a good opportunity, even if it involves much difficulty. He left behind a cushy job in Australia and moved to Sri Lanka to head the largest IT project in the country. Within a year, he had to implement an integrated customer care and billing system at Sri Lanka Telecom.

You might say Priyantha Edirisinghe has a high threshold for pain. He was approached to implement an integrated customer care and billing system, to be completed within a year, at Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) in 2002.

He was then working at Citibank Australia as project manager and was based in Australia and Singapore. Before that, he was a systems analyst with Aon Insurance for six years also in Australia. Tertiary education at the University of Sydney earned him a Masters of Computing and a Bachelor of Commerce (Information Systems).

Moving to a country with a less developed communications infrastructure was no problem for him. Priyantha, now SLT's CIO, tells why he heeded the call: "Being assigned to implement the largest IT project in Sri Lanka, and with multinationals involved, I saw it as a unique opportunity to learn and broaden my experience. You don't get such opportunities often.

"The customer care and billing systems (CBIS) are the two things that if I didn't get right, SLT could go bankrupt. ...The project had to be implemented within a year, with 120 people involved. The US$20 million project would transform our processes, and plug revenue leakages, involve re-skilling of our SLT people in project management, business continuity, business processing re-engineering and so on."

A Convergys Corporation solution, CBIS allows customers to view promotions, discount packages, billing information, call pattern analyses and electricity consumption online, among other details. For SLT, the system enables the marketing team speedy time-to-market for new services and specials.

Priyantha explains how CBIS works: "OSS is integrated into BSS. When the customers come onboard, they are automati­cally registered in the billing system. OSS carries all the network information-loop availability and services for customers such as asymmetric digital subscriber line (ADSL), integrated services digital network (ISDN), internet access-are assessed through OSS.

"The engineers will access OSS. As soon as we allocate the loop, a customer record is created straightaway. BSS has connectivity to the switches. All calls are recorded and processed by BSS for billing." A loop is a user line or fibre ring laid underground to connect a building to the telecommunications exchange building, while a switch is a device that makes, breaks or changes the connec­tions in or among circuits.

Records of 950,000 customers, as well as information on billing and collection are stored in one database. Data is now easily accessible by SLT staff and thereby streamline operations.

Phase one of CBIS went live in April 2003 with ADSL, internet and other data services offered. In the second phase, 300,000 residential customers started receiving improved bills from the end of October 2003. The final phase was rolled out a month later to corporate and all other customers.

"Now, all the information is online. On the fly, we can see all information regarding connectivity, we can allocate the loop and new telephone number online, we can give the phone number-all these within 10 to 12 seconds. ...If we have a long delay in offering services, the customers will go to our competitors.

"When people apply for a line, we need to see whether there's a loop in our cabinet in that area to provide the particular line. Information on loop availability, network inventory, capacity and other relevant network information for the line were not available online previously," Priyantha says.

"Before, it was three to four weeks. We had to send somebody to the field to find whether we could give the connectivity, commission the loop, lay the line-all these required manual work," he adds.

As at 26 October, SLT's fixed line and mobile customer bases were 912,000 and 410,000 respectively. Inaccurate call readings generated by the meter-based system are a thing of the past as well.

Previously, readings were not time-based but point-based-the meters of the first and the last calls were recorded and SLT took the difference between the two. The new system, however, records the duration of every call, hence generating accurate readings.

SLT's positive performance has run counter to the effects of the Asian tsunami in December 2004. The disaster damaged 59,000 telephones (6.9 per cent of the total customer base) and 2 per cent of SLT's total network, Priyantha reveals. Quick action by SLT contained the impact.

"We set up a disaster management centre and also within a matter of hours, established connectivity to all essential service agencies such as the police, hospitals, government agents' offices and other local authorities. Satellite communication facilities and wireless phones were provided immediately to relief agencies.

"By 27 December, SLT had made arrangements for telephone facilities...free of charge...for the public to convey urgent messages to relations, friends, relief centres, hospitals and so on. These facilities were set up at regional telecom offices of Galle, Trincomalee, Batticaloa, Ampara, Kalmunai, Vavuniya and Hambantota," he says, adding that those in refugee camps were also allowed to make free calls.

By 7 January 2005, about 20,000 (33%) of SLT's damaged lines were reconnected. In addition, SLT waived the December charges to all affected subscribers. Some customers who were still affected up to February were not billed as well. Priyantha estimates the revenue loss per month to be US$244,000.

Since then, the battle for customers has ensued. Conceding that SLT's prices are higher than its competitors', Priyantha points out that subscribers in turn were assured of reliable infrastructure and an 8,000-strong workforce to service the company's products.

"The one priority is to leverage [CBIS] to maximise capability. We can put new products, technologies and cross-marketing on the fly. ...You might have ADSL, ISDN and fixed line and all this can be converged in one bill or separately. We can offer customers special packages. We want to make sure the technology is deployed to our advantage. Telcos now need to be geared to offer new products and services every day and SLT is now geared to do just that," Priyantha says.

SLT, Suntel and Lanka Bell offer free incoming calls, which will boost growth in the cellular sector. However, the calling party pays (CPP) policy is facing a roadblock. "The government hasn't finalised the CPP regulations though our systems are ready for it. With the new government in, we don't know what it will be like and when CPP will be activated," says Priyantha.

Meanwhile, SLT is turning its eyes to the rural areas. Most fixed connections are centred in the urbanised western province where the capital and industrial base are located. In Q3 2005, SLT launched its code division multiple access (CDMA) services, branded SLT Citylink, in Anuradhapura which is in northern Sri Lanka.

The launch is the first in the plan to roll out the largest CDMA network on the island. CDMA is a mobile technology for fixed lines, Priyantha explains.

"We launched CDMA within two months and configured it on CBIS in three days. Without CBIS, SLT wouldn't have been able to launch CDMA and bill people for it," he adds.

Through the three-phase plan, meant to provide connectivity to rural communities, SLT will issue 150,000 connections a year across Sri Lanka until 2007. In 2005 alone, 90 per cent of the island was to be covered by SLT's CDMA network. The company will also provide more public telephones in the rural areas, with high quality coverage provided through SLT Citylink.

Apart from fixed access, CDMA can be used to provide other services including SMS, voice mail and internet access, which rural communities can enjoy. Mobitel, mobile operator and SLT's fully owned subsidiary, is working on providing coverage, Priyantha reveals.

Priyantha 's road to success is not without external and internal challenges. He tackled an external hurdle last year, when SLT received a request by the country's telecom watchdog, Telecommunications Regulatory Commission, to block international calls to 12 countries for three months from last November.

The request was meant to prevent dial-up modem hijacking and internet porn scams on the island, following complaints by internet users over international calls they did not make. Some websites install malicious dialers on users' computers and change the dial-up numbers to overseas ones, usually of porn sites or phone sex terminals.

SLT turned down the request. "Prior to the...announcement, SLT had been moni­toring all potential fraud across the network, but as these nations do not represent the highest usage of calling destinations for SLT customers, SLT had decided not to cause undue panic over the...30-plus cases reported by all operators nation-wide.

"However, the situation is under constant supervision by SLT who is [keeping] a close watch on the financial safety of all customers. In addition, as this request was made only with relevance to all operators' IDD facilities, SLT is still able to make operator-assisted calls to the nations of Solomon's Island, Vanuatu, Cook Islands, Wallis, Funtana Islands, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Tuvalu, Tokelau, Western Samoa, Kiribati and Niue Estonia," explains Priyantha.

As for internal challenges, he has had his share, such as ensuring network security. "It was difficult because [senior management has] never been attacked by hackers to a level that the company could be crippled," Priyantha says.

It was his success in hacking into some financial documents that convinced senior management of the vulnerabilities of an unprotected CBIS. He has since drawn a security policy for SLT and is undergoing BS7799 security certification for data and network security.

Priyantha has also convinced top management to revamp SLT's intranet, which is expected to be up and running by June. "We have a multi-protocol label switching backbone that we can ride on. Previously, we didn't have enough bandwidth for the applications we needed; traffic had increased because more computers were added to the network," he says.

This year, other projects will keep him busier. SLT is looking into rolling out a disaster recovery system, enterprise resource planning systems and data warehousing application. "We are preparing our requirement specifications and will see what capacity we need. Due diligence and tendering will take six to seven months. Implementation will be in the fourth quarter of 2006," he says.

Deregulation of the island's tele-communications industry in 1996 led to Japan's Nippon Telegraph & Telephone buying 35% of SLT for US$225 million in 1997. The following year, SLT's customer base hit 500,000. The government holds a 49.50% share, while the rest is held by public shareholders.

The number of fixed telephone lines installed jumped by 84% between 1997 and 1999 due to the entry of Telia AB of Sweden, TransAsia Telecom of Singapore, Trans Atlantic Telecommunications UK and the privatisation of SLT.

As at the end of Q2 2005, the country's fixed access telephones numbered 1.02 million, with cellular phones totaling 2.77 million. There were also 6,134 pay phone booths in the same six-month period.

In the first nine months of 2005, there were 280,000 internet users among the 19.5 million population in Sri Lanka. This means the penetration rate was 1.4%. Internet usage has grown by 130.5% between 2000 and last year.

In 2004, there were 2.2 million cellular mobile subscribers in the country, working out to 11.47 cell phone subscribers per 100 inhabitants. In the same year, there were 991,200 main telephone lines in Sri Lanka (or 5.14 lines per 100 inhabitants).

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