For more than a century and a half, SLT-MOBITEL has helped connect Sri Lanka. What began with telephone lines has evolved through mobile, broadband, and fibre to become part of how people live, work, and do business.
Today, the brand is evolving again, bringing together heritage, infrastructure, and reach with mobile strength to play a larger role in Sri Lanka’s digital future.
Rohana Ellawala, Chief Marketing Officer of SLT-MOBITEL, spoke to Echelon about bringing two brand legacies together, staying relevant as technology changes, and connecting Sri Lanka to its digital future.
SLT-MOBITEL brings together two established brands with distinct identities. How are you using their combined strengths to create a stronger brand?
Building one SLT-MOBITEL brand is about more than bringing two names together. SLT MOBITEL combines the strength of SLT’s fixed connectivity and fibre infrastructure and decade of trust with Mobitel’s mobile expertise and agility.
We now see ourselves as more than a telco service provider. We want to be part of how our customers live and work, powering homes, businesses, and mobile lives under the promise, “The Connection for life”.
Bringing fixed and mobile together is central to that. Customers can move seamlessly from high-speed fibre at home to mobile connectivity on the go, while businesses and the public sector can access a broader range of services, from connectivity to cloud, cybersecurity, networking, enterprise Internet of Things (IoT), and so on through one service provider.
But a unified brand has to feel unified to the customer. Whether someone walks into a retail outlet, contacts us for support or uses one of our digital platforms, the experience should be simple and consistent across services. The same principle applies inside the organisation. Bringing the two businesses together allows us to build on the trust and strengths of both, while operating with a clearer identity, proposition and a more cohesive relationship with our customers.
SLT-MOBITEL is one of Sri Lanka’s most established brands. What does it need to stand for today that it didn’t ten years ago?
Ten years ago, the promise was largely about physical connectivity: connecting homes and businesses through voice and data. Today, the role is much broader. As SLT-MOBITEL evolves from a traditional telecommunications provider towards a technology-led business, the brand must stand for digital empowerment and inclusion.
“As SLT-MOBITEL evolves from a traditional telecommunications provider towards a technology-led business, the brand must stand for digital empowerment and inclusion.”
We started by laying cables. Today, we are helping build the digital foundations of Sri Lanka’s economy. That means enabling individuals, businesses, and institutions to participate in an increasingly digital world. Connectivity remains at the heart of what we do, but what matters more is what people can do with that connection.
How do you create emotional value and affinity around something customers increasingly regard as a basic utility?
When something becomes as essential as electricity or water, its emotional value comes from dependability and empathy. People depend on connectivity for things that matter, earning a living, running a business, studying or staying close to family. Our responsibility is therefore not simply to provide a network, but to give customers confidence that it will work when they need it.
We are strengthening round-the-clock operations and fault-resolution capabilities islandwide, while moving from reactive troubleshooting towards more predictive care. The technology may be invisible, but the peace of mind it provides should not be.
How do you modernise a brand with more than 160 years of heritage without losing the trust built over generations?
Heritage is our anchor, and agility is how we move forward. Modernising does not mean walking away from our history. It means giving decades of institutional trust a modern relevance.
Through our unified identity and wider portfolio, we blend credibility with contemporary digital platforms. Powering the Lanka Government Cloud, rolling out public 5G, and bringing digital inclusion to secondary schools show that stability and innovation can sit comfortably under one trusted roof.
How is SLT-MOBITEL using AI and customer insight to create more relevant customer experiences?
AI and data give us the opportunity to understand customers better and make their experience simpler. We are moving away from one-size-fits-all offers towards more personalised experiences. Internally, AI-assisted engineering, automated development, and employee innovation initiatives are helping us bring ideas and products to market faster.
For customers, that should translate into simpler digital interactions, more personalised services and support that anticipates their needs. As the technology becomes more sophisticated, the experience should become easier and more seamless.
Where does SLT-MOBITEL see its next wave of growth, and how can it advance Sri Lanka’s digital future?
Our next wave of growth extends beyond traditional telecommunications into areas such as locally hosted cloud services through Akaza Multi-Cloud, SASE (Secure Access Service Edge), Data Center Solutions, Cybersecurity, Connected-device Analytics, and Digital Platforms for businesses and institutions.
SLT-MOBITEL is helping turn Sri Lanka’s AI ambitions into action. As a founding partner of Sri Lanka AI Week, we are bringing together government, global technology leaders, businesses and innovators, while providing the connectivity and digital infrastructure needed to accelerate adoption and help build the next-gen AI ecosystem for an AI-enabled economy for businesses, education and modern lifestyles of families & individuals, delivering on the promise of “The Connection for Life”.