By Karthiga R Ratnam
Sri Lanka Telecom has released the 2005/2006 edition of the Telephone Directory along with the rainbow pages. The new directory has been re-designed to fulfill three main objectives; to be comprehensive, convenient and colorful.
With this in mind, SLT has rescoped its new directory to add more value to the user. For the Western Province the directory to With this in mind, SL T has rescoped its new directory to add more value to the user. For the Western Province the directory is published in two volumes. The first volume consists of information pages, religious pages, organization pages and rainbow pages. The second volume is published as three books as per the administrative districts in the western province ; Colombo, Kalutara, and Gampaha. Every SL T customer will get the first volume and the relevant second volume. The year 2005 provincial directory is published in four volumes to cover the entire provincial areas of North/East, orth Central/North Western, Central/Uva and Southern/Sabaragamuva. Each volume covers two provinces and the information pages and government institutions cover the whole island and are common to all four volumes. The provincial edition of the Rainbow Pages is also common to all four volumes. The two major sections common to both the Western Province and Provincial area directories are the White Pages and the Rainbow Pages. The White Pages consists of five sub sections. The information pages contains contact information on SL T products and services and contact numbers of SLT Management and Foreign representatives. The government pages contains an alphabetic index in addition to the categorical index of contact information on Government Organizations such as Ministries, Departments, Provincial councils, Parliament, President office etc. The religious pages contain contact information with respect to religious organizations of different religions in Sri Lanka. The personal names pages contain additional information such as listing under other family member’s name, fax number, mobile number, and email address, and the organizational pages. The Rainbow Pages is the classified business section of SL T and the business organizations are classified according to the type of product or service they offer. A new color index concept has been introduced to help customers’ access information easily.
Color advertisements have also been introduced. The rainbow pages information is also available on CD, through the SL T website, and the call centre. Several value additions have been made, such as, including personal qualifications, memberships, numbers of other telephone operators within the personal pages. In the business pages prominent lettering, logo and advertisements, other extra information such as parking facility of the particular company, delivery details are also included. The aim of SLT is to cultivate a directory using community in Sri Lanka. They hope with the introduction of these new value additions is that more customers will use the directory as a habit rather than as a last resort. Furthermore, SLT also offers W AP enabled directory services to mobile users and hopes to offer information through SMS to other operators. The long-term objective of SL T is to encompass all telephone information in one national directory. ®
