The government should incorporate digital aspects into the agriculture, tourism and manufacturing sectors to strive towards a digital economy in order to achieve the ICT revenue target of USD 5 billion by 2022, said Minister of Telecommunication, Foreign Employment and Sports, Harin Fernando at the Huawei Lanka ICT congress in Colombo.
“5G is an innovative and an amazing start,” the Minister said.
An agreement has been signed for digital transformation to accommodate future trends and this would be unfolded by the mid of the year as soon as the budget proposal is finalized.
The Enterprise Sri Lanka loan scheme also enables young entrepreneurs who are qualified and excelled in this sector to obtain loans to develop their own businesses. Thus this paves the way for the economic growth of the country.
Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) along with Huawei, has built up a huge highway underground for data transmission through fiber optic technology which is very costly. “However all quality things are not cheap,” he added. An underground pipeline is there even to connect Kilinochchi and Jaffana. Through this it enables all 339 AGA divisions in the country to be connected with 100 mbps (mega bit per second) speed.
“There are many complaints on this transformation, however it is a matter of time to get used to the advancing technology,” he added. The hard work is already completed and yet people don’t see what the government has really done for the benefit of the general public.
5G is now the key driving force behind the digitalization of all industries and a more connected world.
Sri Lanka emerges as the first South Asian nation to successfully demonstrate a 5th generation mobile telephony in 2018.
Smarter cities incorporated with cloud, big data analysis, artificial intelligence, video analysis and Internet of Things (IoT) will come up in the near future which enables people to come up with a whole new level of digital life.
Thus the Sri Lankan government’s vision to become an ICT hub in the region by developing the smart city ecosystem is fulfilled.