Sri Lanka Telecom’s forced tariff reduction effective next month

Under a Supreme Court ruling earlier this year, Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) will apply fixed telephony tariff reductions from 1 November, and will issue refunds to subscribers backdated to 1 January. SLT announced that telephone bills would be reduced by 8.7% and the overcharged amounts would be deducted from the November bill. The Supreme Court ordered SLT to refund excessive end-user tariffs amounting to ‘billions of rupees’ (LKR1 = ~USD0.01), following a case filed by a consumer organisation. SLT deducted LKR785 million (USD7 million) from its earnings for the quarter ended June 2007 in anticipation of the court decision. The operator has also been ordered to switch to per-second call billing.