Internet Packages Sri Lanka — Real Price After Tax

Two operators quote on two different bases. SLT-Mobitel prints “Rs. 5900 + Tax” on its package cards and states, under every package family, that all charges are exclusive of government taxes. Dialog prints an advertised rental andits own “Tax Inclusive monthly rental” for the same package. Neither of those advertised numbers is what the bank debits, and they are not the same kind of number as each other, so comparing them by eye gives the wrong answer. This tool puts every package on one basis: the tax-inclusive monthly bill.

The tax on a broadband rental

Sri Lanka Telecom and Mobitel both publish a tax table, and both give the same two stacks, updated for the VAT amendment effective 1 January 2024. For IDD & internet services:

• Government Levy (CESS): 2.04%
• Effective VAT: 18.84%
• Recovery in lieu of SSCL: 2.62%
• Total effective tax and SSCL recovery: 23.50%

For voice, PEOTV and other services the same table adds a 15.31% Telecommunication Levy, charged under the Telecommunication Levy Act No. 21 of 2011, and the total becomes 42.02%. The levy is the whole difference. Data-only service is outside it, which is why a broadband line is taxed at 23.50% and a phone or TV line is taxed at nearly twice that.

The operators publish these components as effectiverates on the ex-tax rental, and they sum exactly to the published total (2.04 + 18.84 + 2.62 = 23.50). They are therefore applied as one factor rather than compounded. Compounding them would give 24.46%, which reproduces neither operator’s published total nor Dialog’s own published inclusive rentals. So:

real monthly bill = advertised rental × 1.2350

and in reverse, to recover the rental behind a bill you already pay, rental = bill ÷ 1.2350.

Ranking, and what is deliberately left blank

Cost per GB is the bill divided by the monthly anytime allowance. It is left blank for unlimited packages rather than filled with a made-up number, and those are ranked on cost per advertised Mbps instead. Cost per Mbps is left blank wherever the operator does not publish a speed for that specific package — which is most volume plans, where the speed is a shared “up to” figure for the access technology (SLT publishes up to 21 Mbps for ADSL, for example) rather than a package feature. The contract total is the monthly bill times 12 or 24, plus the one-off charge; SLT quotes its connection and startup fees before tax, so those are multiplied by 1.2350 too, while Dialog quotes a flat connection price and it is used as quoted.

A package counts as covering your usage when its allowance is greater than or equal to the GB you entered — 175 GB covers a 175 GB month exactly. Packages that fall short are listed below the table with the shortfall in GB rather than hidden, because a package that is Rs 400 cheaper and 5 GB short is a decision worth seeing.

Dialog is the only operator that publishes both an advertised rental and its own tax-inclusive rental for the same package. That makes its package cards an external check on the 23.50%factor: if the factor were wrong, the computed figures below would not land on Dialog’s. Every row agrees to within Rs 1, which is Dialog rounding its own figure to the rupee. This check runs whenever the site is built, and the build fails if any row stops agreeing.

The advertised rental beside the figure your bank will be debited, for the packages people search for most. All prices read from the operator sites on 2026-09-23.

Sources: slt.lk and dialog.lk package pages, plus the SLT and Mobitel tax tables. Commercial prices move without notice — confirm with the operator before ordering.

Every omission is deliberate, and each one is here so you can judge it rather than assume the list is complete.

• SLT-Mobitel — Trio Vibe, Trio Vibe Plus, Trio Shine, SLTMOBITEL Connect

  Bundle PEOTV channels with the data rental. PEOTV is taxed at 42.02%, data at 23.50%, and SLT does not publish the split, so any single figure for these would be invented.

• SLT-Mobitel — LTE Flash 5, LTE Flash 10, Ultra Flash Prime

  Priced against a daily quota (5 GB, 10 GB and 200 GB per day) rather than a monthly allowance, so a cost-per-GB against a monthly need would not be comparable.

• SLT-Mobitel — Ultra Prime

  A 5 TB 1 Gbps plan at Rs 75,000 + tax with a 24-month commitment. It is a different product class from home broadband and would distort every ranking it appeared in.

• Hutch — not included

  hutch.lk publishes prepaid and postpaid mobile plans and MiFi router data plans, but no fixed home-broadband package list carrying both a monthly rental and a monthly allowance. Nothing on the site could be transcribed without inventing figures, so Hutch is left out rather than guessed at.

Also out of scope: mobile prepaid and postpaid data plans, enterprise and leased-line products, promotional discounts and bundled devices, coverage by address, and any claim about the speed you will actually get. The speeds shown are the advertised ones.

• Sri Lanka Telecom — Tax Rates (IDD & Internet Services 23.50%, Voice/PEOTV 42.02%)
• Mobitel — Tax rates table (independent confirmation of the same two stacks)
• SLT-Mobitel — Broadband packages, rentals and startup fees
• SLT-Mobitel — Fibre (FTTx) new-connection charges
• Dialog — Home Broadband Postpaid packages, with published tax-inclusive rentals
• Telecommunications Regulatory Commission of Sri Lanka — Telecommunication Levy Act No. 21 of 2011
• Inland Revenue Department — Value Added Tax (18% standard rate from 1 January 2024)

Tax rates and every package rental, allowance and one-off charge on this page were read from the operator and regulator pages above on 2026-09-23. The tax table is dated 1 January 2024 by both operators. Package prices are commercial, not statutory — they can change on any day without an announcement, so confirm with the operator before you order or switch.