Malaysia was asked to extradite the Boss
of Maxis, which along with the Sri Lankan Government now own SLT. Maxis bought the
NTT stake in SLT, and all appeared to have gone without a hitch!
Was that because at the time of the purchase,
the authorities fast tracked the deal? These are questions for which I don’t have
any answers, but if a pattern is to emerge, the Indian authorities have found fault
with their deals with Maxis!
See link above to a recent story, where the
Malaysians refuse to arrest their citizens and hand them over to the Indians for
an investigation into a past Indian Telecom Minister’s alleged wrongdoing.
ALL OUR TELECOMS even SLT is foreign owned
and whilst they have been able to expand their coverage service, user-base and profits
by leaps and bounds, all profits accrue to the foreign investors in our telecom
investments and industry.
While I personally don’t begrudge that, because
had we NOT had this investment, we will not have competing Telecom operators in
the Island and have a reasonable tariff which the Government is also taxing very
heavily to fill their own revenue shortfall, and in that effectively use it as a
regressive tax on the people of Sri Lanka.
Airtel is in play and will shortly be purchased
by SLT’s Mobitel, which effectively means Maxis will be the new owners. I believe
Etisalat is also in play and it is Dialog who is apparently interested in them,
and Hutch will either close down or its operations folded into one of the remaining
operators.
So what do we have in store? ONLY DIALOG
AND SLT/MOBITEL
BOTH MALAYSIAN! What is AXIATA IS TAKEN OVER
BY MAXIS? ALL OUR TELECOMS WILL BE OWNED BY ONE OUTFIT.
Ananda Krishnen whose dad left Jaffna on
a train to Colombo, and then out to Malaysia will own all our Telecommunications!
How about that?
Obviously the Sri Lankan Government will
wake up ONLY when the deed is done, and there is nothing they can do to stop it.
Just think about it!
Think about it, there is NO SHERMAN ANTI TRUST ACT IN SRI LANKA.
It is high time Sri Lanka enacts legislation to stop Monopolies from being created in the future!
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