Who we are
DialoQ began as a weekend project in the winter of 2021, when four Colombo-based writers — tired of glossy operator press releases and affiliate-driven "top 10" lists — decided the country deserved an editorial voice that actually tested the networks it wrote about. Five years on, the desk still fits inside a single co-working suite in Union Place, but the scope has grown. We now track every major Sri Lankan operator on a rolling basis, maintain a province-level coverage database, and publish long-form guides on subjects the mainstream technology press tends to skip.
We are a review publication. That means we write about networks we have used ourselves, in the places we actually live and travel. It also means we refuse to be a shop window. We do not sell SIM cards. We do not resell broadband plans. We do not take affiliate commissions from operator links. When a reader reaches the end of one of our reviews, the only action we ask them to take is to keep reading — to look at the methodology, the supporting field notes, or another review that might offer a useful comparison.
Editorial independence
Independence is the line we guard most carefully. No operator has ever seen a DialoQ review before publication. We do not accept paid placements, hosted travel, loaned equipment beyond temporary review units, or advertising from the companies we cover. The only sponsorship that appears on this site is for adjacent products — things like consumer routers, VPN services, or developer tools — and even those run through a strict editorial firewall. Our sponsorship policy, along with our correction and conflict-of-interest procedures, is documented in full on our editorial policy page.
Where a team member has a personal tie to an operator — a relative on staff, a previous consulting engagement, or a small equity holding through a passive fund — that disclosure appears at the bottom of any piece the writer contributes to. We would rather over-disclose than have readers wonder.
How we test
Our methodology combines three data streams. First, we run scheduled speed tests from fixed locations at three times of day: morning (09:00 IST), afternoon (15:00) and evening (21:00). These are wired Ethernet tests for fibre and VDSL connections, and tethered-handset tests for mobile. Second, we collect field notes during travel — the kind of qualitative observations that never show up on a speed chart, like how a coastal cell reacts to monsoon rain, or whether a regional SLT exchange struggles during Avurudu weekends. Third, we analyse anonymised reader reports submitted through our tips form, which help us spot trends we might miss from Colombo alone.
Every operator score on our site is a composite of these streams. We publish the weighting openly: 40% measured throughput, 25% coverage footprint, 20% reader-reported support quality, and 15% editorial assessment of value and plan design. The numbers are revised quarterly, and older reviews are marked as archived when they fall out of date — we never silently rewrite history.
What we cover, and what we don't
We cover Sri Lankan retail connectivity. That includes home broadband over fibre, VDSL and ADSL; mobile plans across prepaid and postpaid; the early stages of the country's 5G rollout; and adjacent topics like router hardware, mesh Wi-Fi for Sri Lankan homes, and the latency realities of gaming over a tropical undersea cable landing. We do not cover enterprise connectivity pricing or wholesale spectrum politics in depth — there are excellent analyst firms who do that work better than we could.
We also do not publish rumours. If a 5G rollout date is on our site, it is because we have a public source, a network observation, or both. When we speculate — which we do occasionally, in clearly labelled opinion pieces — we say so in the first paragraph.
Corrections
We make mistakes. When we do, we fix them in place, log the change at the bottom of the article, and tell the affected operator directly if the error was in their favour or against it. Our correction inbox is [email protected], and we aim to respond to every flagged issue within two working days.
Our goal is simple: if a reader in Nugegoda or Batticaloa is choosing between two broadband plans, we want our review to be the one thing they actually read first — and the one they feel they can trust.
Our editorial team
Kavindu Perera
Editor-in-Chief
Nethmi Silva
Mobile Networks Lead
Ravindu Fernando
Fixed-Line Analyst
Amaya Jayasinghe
Coverage & Data
Get in touch
If you have a tip, a correction, or an operator-experience story worth sharing, our contact page lists the right inbox. For story pitches from freelance writers anywhere on the island, we read every email — though we can only respond to a fraction of them. Thank you for reading.