Bharti Airtel to launch Lanka services by end of the year

Bharti Airtel hopes to start providing services in Sri Lanka by the end of this year. Besides 2G, the firm is currently testing 3G services in the island.The company will initially start with Colombo and thereafter move to other towns and rural areas.Bharti has tied up with Huawei Technologies to build and manage GSM mobile infrastructure in Sri Lanka. Huawei will deploy and manage Airtel’s core network, BTS and end-to-end 2G/3G network solutions.About 80% of Sri Lanka’s mobile market is controlled by Dialog Telekom, a unit of Telekom Malaysia.Meanwhile, Bharti intends to cover around 85% of India’s rural population by the year-end.Bharti currently enjoys 28.5% market share in eastern India.