Bharti to start operations in Sri Lanka by Dec

Country's leading telecom firm Bharti Airtel today said it expects to roll out services in Sri Lanka by December as inter-connection issues with local telecom firms are expected to be sorted out.     

"We find the (Sri Lankan) regulator extremely supportive," Bharti Airtel Chief Executive Officer Manoj Kohli told reporters on the sidelines of the South Asian Telecommunication Regulators' Council conference here.     

"We are on track to launch the services .... Inter-connection issues have been nearly sorted out and the roll out is likely by December 2008," he said.     

The Indian telecom major was facing problem for getting interconnection from the local operators in the island country.     

Airtel had said that the incumbent operators in Lanka are not giving interconnections to the company.     

Bharti Airtel Lanka Private Ltd, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel Ltd, had already announced plans to launch 2G and 3G services in Sri Lanka under the same brand Airtel.      

It had signed a $150-million deal with China's Huawei Technologies to set up a mobile phone network in Sri Lanka.