A hardware change that had taken place at the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE) had caused a significant lag in the broker systems which led to a market halt on Monday (13), its connection provider clarified yesterday. The data centre service provider of the CSE, SLT-Mobitel, made a public notice providing reasons for the unexpected technical situation behind the market halt that took place due to the connection instability. SLT-Mobitel further noted that it had taken prompt action after experiencing the connection instability issue that took place at the CSE within the least amount of time in order to rectify the connection, adding that the data centres were operated within the usual capacity during the incident. SLT-Mobitel noted that as the national provider, it assures its partners and service user community that the service provider’s priority is to provide fast, reliable, and quality solutions and the service has been provided as such for decades. In response to the social media coverage that SLT-Mobitel was accountable for the lag in the connection, SLT-Mobitel clarified: “We take our responsibility to clear any misunderstanding that has arisen due to miscommunication and reassure the stability and the speed of our data hosting services to our trusted clients.” Due to the aforesaid connection issue that arose, the CSE had to halt stock trading for a period of 15 minutes. Therefore, the CSE had to switch to a backup connection. Thus, the CSE was able to resume trading at 1.10 p.m. However, on the same day, the market ended on a red note, with the All Share Price Index (ASPI) closing at 8,536.88, a decline of 3.7%. Also, the turnover was recorded as Rs. 6.7 billion, well below than the average turnover of over Rs. 10 billion that the CSE witnessed in the past few weeks. Despite the prevailing lockdown, during the latter part of the previous month, the CSE was able to achieve record-breaking moments.
