Sri Lanka: Hosting, Domains, Internet and Technological Advancement

The Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka is an island country in South Asia with a population of approximately 23 million people and home to many cultures, languages, and ethnicities. When asked to describe Sri Lanka, Ruwan Wigamage, assist. manager at LK Domain Registry, said that it is one of the leading tea exports, and then proudly and without a shadow of a doubt added that Sri Lanka is the most beautiful island that every person simply must visit.

Sri Lanka and Digital Growth

Technological Advancement

Sri Lanka is a developing country, occupying 73rd place in the table of 191 countries on the Human Development Index (index used by the United Nations to measure the progress of a country). As a matter of fact, being the highest-ranked South Asian nation in terms of development, Sri Lanka is very much ahead with other countries in terms of technological advancement.

Indeed, Ruwan claimed that most of technologies and even 5G have been tested in Sri Lanka by a number of service providers and the result of the following is quite good Internet connection and its affordability. Despite the fact that Internet penetration is only about 30-40%, there are around 5-6 ISPs that provide a fair Internet coverage islandwide and the price for 100GB data is about €5.

Language and Support

Customers can address and receive email and social media support in Sri Lanka 24/7, while call centre support is provided only during working hours.

People in Sri Lanka give great importance to their native languages and communication between communities is mostly carried out in Sinhala and Tamil. English is used when speaking about support and business issues, though the country is now in the process of making all support services multilingual and are to introduce Sinhala and Tamil language also.

Local or International?

Developers and others working in the same or similar industry often choose services provided by international players, but it’s most unlikely that an average person chose those players. Indeed, global player services are not only overprices, but also overrated. As a result, an average person living in Sri Lanka will much more likely choose local business or entrepreneurs and the following is due to the local language support. Support in the native language is the main advantage and reason why people address local registries. Indeed, local language, currency, price, support make the product very attractive.

Pricing and Payment Gateways

Regular price for the .lk domain is 4000 Sri Lankan Rupee, which is about $12. But the mentioned price is only for locals, while foreigners are to pay for the same domain three times as much, which equals about $40. As of today, there are 50 000 .lk domains registered and since the market is in the growing period that number is steadily increasing.

ISP and technology partners have good connections with data Foreign Service providers and mostly sell hosting and other services to local people; therefore, for them to have customers the price must be affordable. Accordingly, the price for shared hosting services is quite low and ranges from $10 to $20 per year.

Businesses in Sri Lanka try to ensure that customers have the best purchasing experience with little to no inconveniences. Therefore, almost all local banks as well as other providers have their own payment gateways. As a matter of fact, payment gateways can be easily integrated and if there’s a need or a requirement for a website to integrate a payment gateway, this kind of requirement or need is supported by the resellers.

Website Builders in Sri Lanka

Despite the fact that people in Sri Lanka had already got acquainted with Site.pro website builder a couple of years back, have tried it out and liked it, due to the recent economic crisis they could not make use of it as efficiently and effectively as possible. Nonetheless, Ruwan claims that website builder popularity is starting to grow now and is very looking forward to making it more popularised, so that the community could use it and create their beautiful websites in a very short period of time.

Lifehacks and Promotion

During the whole conversation, Ruwan more than once mentioned that people in Sri Lanka do not tend to stay in the same place and are constantly making progress. Accordingly, as people in Sri Lanka place great importance on the local language and native culture, it is not surprising, therefore, that the first lifehack — to become one of the founding countries that enabled the possibility to register domain names in Sinhala and Tamil '.ලංකා' and '.இலங்கை' as widely accepted by the residents of the country.

Another lifehack is closely related to the educational activity for local community. There is a training division in Sri Lanka that greatly supports local schools, institutions, universities and conducts free of charge training programmes to provide knowledge about Internet and IT and improve programming and computer skills.

There are various ways of supporting the IT area: research grants, projects (e.g., Hithawathi – 'to assist all Sri-Lankan citizens, especially women and children, to surf the internet safely with the use of relevant tools'), and competitions organised on a regular basis. One of the competitions called 'bestweb.lk' is organised annually for more than 10 years and is a web-based competition providing an exclusive opportunity to promote and popularise web presence.

Final Words

In conclusion, Ruwan believes that hopefully, people will start more businesses and will need more domain names, and that should be a mindset for the government. Moreover, despite the fact that Sri Lanka’s market is still in the growing stage and due to the current situation there’s a delay in achieving all targets, there’s a confident expectation of a good future and a big potential to grow and develop.