Dialog GSM Sri Lanka’s premier Mobile Telecommunications Provider announced Wednesday 6^th April, the launch of Sinhala and Tamil Mobile Portals on its state of the art GSM Network. A major break through in local language facilitation, the Sinhala and Tamil Mobile Portals developed in association with Microimage – the award winning Sri Lankan Software Company, will provide an all new frontier for multi-lingual access to the Mobile Internet. The revolutionary break though is further set to accelerate and broad-base the delivery of ICT benefits to Rural Communities in Sri Lanka– further propelling the ICT facilitated socio-economic development across the country.  

“Dialog has been consistently committed to breaking down the barriers to Information and Communications Technology affordability, access and availability” said the company’s Chief Executive Dr Hans Wijayasuriya, “commencing with the breaking down of affordability barriers early in the company’s history, and followed by the rapid expansion of our coverage in to the most rural regions of our country, the challenge we have overcome today in collaboration with Microimage, is that of local language based access to the plethora of information and other services available on the Mobile Internet – all citizens of Sri Lanka are now empowered to exploit technologies such as GPRS and SMS to the fullest. We are very proud that this achievement has been made possible in collaboration with our development partner - Microimage – a pioneering Sri Lankan software company which has played an invaluable role in local language provisioning on ICT infrastructures”.  

The Dialog GSM Mobile Portals, which will be available to all subscribers later in the month of April, have currently been launched in BETA format, the company will use the next 3 weeks as a testing period in order to ensure that the portals are compatible with all Java enabled GPRS handsets. When the portals are commercially released, they will provide fully fledged access to a host of information such as foreign exchange rates, stock prices, agri-market information, news and weather as well as to a wide range of infotainment services, downloads and advanced mobile internet services in Sinhala and Tamil.  

Mr. C. Maliyadde, Hon. Secretary to Hon. Minister of Posts, Telecommunications and Udarata Development, and Chairman of the TRCSL tracing the overall development of communications services in Sri Lanka said “In the past people in the rural communities have had to come to Colombo to access the information they needed – with this product they have the information they need at their finger tips, and in particular, in their own language. These portals will make an immense contribution to providing essential communication facilities to ALL the people of Sri Lanka . This will certainly help the rural community, which does not have access to an internationally spoken language or technology ”  

Mr.Aruna Amarasekara, Director General, Telecommunication Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka, had similar praise for the product  “This is a very important step in terms of rural telephony development.  We are constantly trying to bring telecommunication to the masses and this product will go a long way to help us do that.  People all over the island will now have access to information in their mother tongue – this is an exceptional development”.  

Harsha Purasinghe, CEO of the award winning software company Microimage speaking with regard to the software application  “This is a revolutionary application. To access the portal all you need is a Java enabled mobile phone with Sinhala/Tamil Mobile browser support over GPRS.  These portals are accessible to the masses, and people will be able to reap great benefits from this phenomenon. This application will empower millions of people to embrace ICT, and use it effectively for localized information services, as well as to connect to a host of other mobile content sites, including Government, Entertainment and News sites"  

To log onto these portals, users are required to download the Helawadana or Arichuvadu mobile browser.  

Mr. Lalith Weeratunga, Secretary to the Prime Minister, stressed on the role ICT would play on the roadmap of national development - ”Information technology is essential and we are constantly working towards bridging the IT gap between urbanized and rural areas.  This product will help us build that bridge. These are the first such portals in the world, it’s truly amazing to think that this kind of world class technology is now available to everyone, especially those in the rural communities who need it the most”.  

Microimage has been building up an impressive record of accomplishments since its formation nine years ago.  The company is the winner of a Gold and Silver at the BCS National Best Quality Software Awards 2004, and a Merit Award for Human Capital Software Product and a Special Gold award for Software Localization in 1998. For more information visit www.microimage.com/mobile  

Dialog GSM is a fully owned subsidiary of Telekom Malaysia . Dialog GSM has spearheaded the mobile industry in Sri Lanka since the late 1990s propelling it to a technology level on par with the developed world. The company currently operates a fully-fledged 2.5G GSM Network, with EDGE capability, supporting the very latest in multimedia and mobile Internet services. Dialog GSM’s subscriber base exceeds 1.4million.  Dialog GSM’s national coverage spans all nine provinces with over 470 Base Stations, while international roaming is provided in 190+ countries.