Dear SLT, Thank You for the free unlimited data

Neville Lahiru
4 Min Read

Whether it’s the promise of a balloon or an offer for “unlimited data”, Sri Lanka and its internet problems is something that’s been going on for quite some time. These problems take many shapes and forms. But eventually, it’s often the user that gets screwed up. If you’re an SLT internet user, then yesterday would have been no different.

Come every Christmas and New Year, you’re bound to see countless promotions and offers screaming at your face. One of these was the SLT unlimited data promotion. It’s not every day you see a telecom provider willing to give you free “unlimited” internet for a day. Sounds like the perfect start to 2018 right? Wrong.

Making promises you can’t keep

If you’re an Internet Service Provider and promise free unlimited internet, you better ensure you deliver. Especially if you’re the National Telecom Provider. We all went online on the 1st of January hoping to make the best out of the offer. The early hours seemed fine for most (including myself). But then it happened.

The speeds started dropping. They started dropping to the point where surfing through a website seemed impossible let alone downloading/streaming content. I have an SLT Fibre connection at Ragama, where I live. Usually, I get speeds good enough to download a 1080p movie in a couple of minutes. But on “free internet” day, my speed hovered around 90kbps.

For someone who spends most of his time on the internet, that’s really no way to start off the new year. This begs the question, why did SLT run the promotion? They clearly couldn’t handle the extra load. We saw something similar happen last year as well. Surely, SLT would have been more prepared this time right? We’ve never been so wrong in our lives.

Download speeds hit barely 1Mbps for most users (Credits: Twitter/Mufassal Mafaz)

So what can we do about this?

Truth be told, there’s nothing much we can do. Yes, switching your service provider is an option. But it’s always a choice between the less awful service from the other. You’re bound to come across these sorts of issues either way.

Offering to give users free unlimited data is nice. But what’s nicer is users being able to surf the internet without having to curse every 5 minutes. How can a company call itself the National Internet Service Provider when it can’t even run a promotion properly? SLT ran the same offer last year as well and we faced similar issues. Why SLT repeated the same mistake if they were unable to cater to the expected increased demand is still a question.

But perhaps Sri Lanka Telecom may have had its fair share of issues. A clear explanation is the least the company could do after disappointing so many users. We did reach out to Sri Lanka Telecom regarding the matter as well, and they’re yet to get back to us.

At the time of writing, our own SLT Fibre connection has slowed down significantly. So that might explain why we’ve yet to hear from SLT. All in all, we will be sure to update the article once SLT does get back to us. Assuming our Fibre connection allows us to update the article.

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  1. Good article. I’m also a fiber user and in the early morning speed was blazing. But later it went shit. However i was able to download around 380GBs for that 24 hours of period

    • Thanks Ranil. Yeah, had hope last year’s incident wouldn’t happen this time around. Sadly I was wrong. Wait, did you say 380GB? මොනවද දෙයියනේ එච්චර download කරේ? :-O

  2. I currently live in Salamulla, Kolonnawa. I tried to contact SLT about obtaining a Fiber Optic connection, but 1212 service told me to contact the Kotte SLT Office. When I visited them, they told me, Fibre Optic is not yet available for Salamulla, Kolonnawa and they don’t know when they will be expanding there. This is very disappointing for a tax-money funded company. They should have a responsibility, to every citizen of Sri Lanka, to be transparent in their operations.

  3. #fuck_slt??
    I purchased a 4G home broadband connection yesterday. Yesterday, download speed is around 2~3MBps and I watched some youtube videos and played clash of clans (using about 250MB) . today download and upload speeds are 0MBps