Visiting Sri Lanka.

Visiting to Sri Lanka? You can bring your own mobile phone with you when you are visiting Sri Lanka. If you want to bring any land line phones with you, then you must get necessary permission from the authorities.

If you are bringing your own mobile phone make sure that your mobile phone had the GSM 900 MHz bandwidth as this is the popular one in operation in Sri Lanka. If your mobile phone is a tri or quad band then you don't have to worry about the bandwidth problem in Sri Lanka. If your phone is switched on it will automatically find a partner carrier of your own carrier. You must know international roaming is a good thing to keep in touch with your loved ones and business partners who are in your contact list. But it is a costly one particularly if you have set your internet service to check for your mails. The mobile phone will automatically login to your account without your knowledge and check for emails as you used it in your own country. But while on roaming it is a costly one. Once you reach your home and check your phone bill it will show you a bigger bill.

The best way to handle your home phone number and newly acquired Sri Lanka mobile phone number is to have a Dual SIM standby mobile phones. Keep the local number as the primary one and the home SIM to be as secondary in status. So you can avoid the incoming calls from your home country as your home SIM will be in the roaming mode. If you get any SMS text messages, then you can read it with out any fear higher tariff from your service provider. Calls can be made and received through the local SIM at local rate and it will more cheap when you compare it with your home calling plan.

So once you arrive in Sri Lanka you can get free SIM card at the Colombo International air port. To get this prepaid SIM card all you have to do is to provide your passport photocopy. The SIM card will come with a calling value for Rs 100. All the mobile phone carriers in Sri Lanka provide totally free incoming calls. So get note of the phone number and send it to your people through the SMS text service which is very cheap in Sri Lanka.

Due to Srilanka mobile phone carrier's tariff war, local calling rates went down to 0.25 Sri Lanka cents per minute. But the Sri Lanka TRC intervened and made a new rule to all of them, as out going calls between same net work should be charged at Rs 1/- and out side net work should be charged Rs 2/- per minute. Sending one SMS text message will be Rs 0.25/- and receiving of SMS text message is free. The rule came in to effect from 15/07/2010. With taxes the mobile calls may be Rs 2/- for network and Rs 3/- per minute for non network calls.

When you are coming from overseas, you can get a new SIM connection when you buy a simple mobile phone for US$ 30 or a Smartphone for US$ 1000 at the Colombo airport. Most of the SIM connections are provided for free of charge and need only to reload around US$1.00 at the time of the purchase. There are 5 mobile phone operators in Sri Lanka such as Dialog, Etisalat, Hutch, Mobitel and Airtel.

Sri Lanka offers 3.75G, 3.5G, 3G and 2G network facilities for the mobile phone users along with WLan, WAP and Wi-Fi hot spots too available at important points.

You can reload your phone any where in Sri Lanka from 0.20 cents to 10$. There are reload cards too are available and each street corners usually have mobile phone shops where you can pay and reload any amount you like. To do this write your number and the reload amount in their log and pay the required money, within seconds you will receive the SMS text message from the carrier that your phone had been credited with so much of amount which you had paid. It is a free service and there is no charge for it.

Also you can reload your Etisalat account through adding money to any road side phone booth and follow the instruction s to reload the amount to your mobile phone account. Dialog allow you to transfer money form your account to another friends dialog phone or you can receive money from a friends account to your dialog phone through SMS. There are some limit applies to these money transfers within the Dialog accounts.

Don't forget it is an offence to use someone else mobile phone connection while you are in Sri Lanka. CDMA phones are portable and can be carried any where but in Sri Lanka it is prohibited to take a CDMA phone with you for to call or receive calls. The CDMA phone connection is meant for to use in a particular house or office address only.

If your phone is equipped with a camera, take care not to take photos or videos in restricted areas and temples. It will give you much trouble. Don't try to unlock your expensive Smartphone in Sri Lanka. Some time it can end up with a Hard Lock. There are facilities available to insure your mobile phone in Sri Lanka at very low price.