Telecommunication in Sri Lanka

Development of telephone and internet connections

With an average download speed of 19.29 Mbit/second for fixed-network broadband internet, Sri Lanka ranked 121st in an international comparison. The upload rate of only 4.9 Mbit/second was significantly lower (149th place). The quality of the Internet, consisting of signal fluctuations (jitter) and latency, is very far ahead at 5th place.
In mobile internet, i.e. on tablets and smartphones, Sri Lanka comes 124th with a download speed of 12.78 Mbit/second. The upload speed of around 5 Mbit was only enough for 135th place.

The Speedtest Global Index published regularly by Ookla is based on several million individual measurements in April 2022 from 181 countries.

The following diagrams show the development of the various telephone and Internet connections as a percentage of the country's population. Values above 100% mean that, on average, every inhabitant has more than one connection.

Access to the Internet in Sri Lanka from 1990 - 2020

Broadband internet in Sri Lanka 2001 - 2020

Sri Lanka is lagging behind in the expansion of broadband Internet connections. Around 35% of all residents have access to the Internet. Around 8% have their own fast Internet connection, which is at least faster than the former ISDN (more than 256 kbit/s). All fixed connections via DSL, cable or satellite were counted here, but not those connected to the Internet via mobile communications.