My internet usage is rather constant. The spikes on usage usually correlate with devices changes. For example when I got my iMac I needed extra 15GB that month. When I got a new iPad again a 5GB spike was noticed. How ever since the China Wuhan COVID19 virus lock-down began in Sri Lanka mid March I have noticed that I have been using an excessive of 15GB than my usual usage in a persistent fashion. I run my own business working at home. Thus it is not like my home data usage increased because I was at home - I have been working from home for 7 years now. How did this happen? Any thing fishy?

I have been using SLT internet since October 2001. SLT most of the time has provided a good service to me. In 2008 when I was in Kady/Katugastota I moved to ADSL. Then in 2018 I moved to FTTx (Fiber to Home). The internet speeds have been most of the time exceptionally good. How ever data packages have been the exception. In these time SLT package pricing could be considered daylight robbery. On top of all that the experience your data finishes shorter than the month is very frustrating. All kind of thoughts crossed my mind?

First I wondered if Sri Lanka Telecom was doing some thing similar to the water-board and electricity-board. A crooked attempt to profit amid the chaos. Not only that they seemed to be throttling Torrent speeds. I reached out to some of my friends and collected their thoughts. They assured me that there was no crooked bandwidth robbery or torrent speed throttling. How ever as the torrent speed limiting caught public attention suddenly the speeds returned to normal.

This brought back some memories from early 2000. Short while after moving from Dialog dial-up to SLT dial-up I noticed that VOIP calls were failing. Since I have 2 aunts one in Canada and another in Australia we were heavy users of VOIP calls with services like MSN Messenger. We had to use one service after the other (including many online game chat services) and in time each failed in time. That is when I called SLT and asked about the matter. They gave a very straight answer. VOIP was eating in to their IDD (which was ludicrously expensive) earnings so they were blocking VOIP services.

I was shocked. The whole reason we had internet was to reduce our IDD bills. Both my aunts who are advocates and were interested in coming to Sri Lanka and suing the SLT. The only thing that saved SLT then was the crawling speed of Sri Lankan justice. How ever given one of my cousins in Canada were following computer science we managed to circumvent SLTs restrictions.

No matter what my trusted friends say, some thing tells me they are in to some thing fishy.

In the mean time Elon Musk - founder of Tesla and Space X - is putting up Star Link. It is a satellite based broad-band internet connection that will rival even the best fiber connections w.r.t. speed and ping time. Show your interest by filling up the form in the Starlink website. Sri Lankan moronic ISPs need a brought in to their senses. If StarLink gives me even a remotely comparable price I will ditch SLT fiber. While partly that is because the engineer in me wants to support new technology. But in reality, I am pissed with SLT.