Sri Lanka Telecom (SLT) last week announced a new leadership team with the appointment of Kiththi Perera as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and B.P. Fernandez as the Chief Operating Officer (COO) with effect from January 1, 2019.
Perera joined SLT in 1994 and he played significant leadership roles in various departments with increasing responsibilities for nearly 24 years.
He earned a Masters in Engineering from the University of Moratuwa in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering and is a Chartered Engineer of the Engineering Council (UK) and Institution of Engineering and Technology (UK). ,
He has extensive experience and expertise in developing business solutions to cater for specific business requirements and has helped SLT to grow enterprise and government business significantly over the last 07 years including few national projects such as CHOGM 2013, country’s first purpose-built tier III data centre at Pitipana, AKASA Cloud, Colombo Lotus Tower etc.
As a key member of its initial management team, he helped in planning, designing and developing of data access networks based on G.SHDSL, metro ethernet and digital radio access technologies.
In 2005, SLT appointed Perera as Project Manager of Bharat Lanka Submarine Cable System project where he involved in high level design of first repeaterless submarine cable system (with RA amplifiers and DWDM technology) in South Asia.
As a professional in telecommunication industry, he achieved many awards including the Gold Award (for senior management category) in SLT Transformers Awards in year 2014.
Perera has been serving as a Non-Executive Director of Sri Lanka Telecom (Services) Limited since 2007. Meanwhile, Fernandez holds a BSc (Eng.) in Electronics and Telecommunications from the University of Moratuwa and an MBA from the University of Sri Jayewardenepura. He is a Chartered Engineer and fellow of The Institution of Engineers Sri Lanka.
Fernandez joined SLT in 1991. Following his roles in various multinational telecommunication organizations, he has held a string of senior positions within SLT, culminating to his current position as the Chief Operating Officer.
In this role, he oversees the entire planning, operation, sales and maintenance of SLT network and projects of SLT in Sri Lanka. In addition, he has overseen the design implementation and operation of SLT network and projects of SLT in Sri Lanka.
In addition, he has overseen the design, implementation and operation of SLT’s Call Centre in line with improving customer experience.
He has played a leading role for planning and deploying very large scale programmes for SLT network transformation.
New Generation Network (NGO), Sri Lanka Backbone Network (SLBN), Fiber to The Home (FITH). LTE(4G), National Broadband Programme (i-Sri Lanka), National Data Centre, and Submarine Cable Systerms are some of the flagship projects in which he made his contributions felt.
Fernandez is a permanent member of the Technical Subcommittee of SLT since 2011 and a member of the Senior Tender Board.
He has been functioning as a Non-Executive Director of SLT (Services) Limited since 2007.
