Conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa is owned by Li Ka-shing, one of Asia's richest men. In recent years Hutchison Telecom also sold off its profitable units.

"Hutchison Telecommunications has no plans of selling their Sri Lankan operations to anyone else," a senior official at Sri Lanka's Hutch said on condition of anonymity.

"On the contrary it’s the opposite; the company (Hutchison Telecom) will be investing more in Sri Lanka to improve capacity and increase geographical connectivity."

Hutchison has sold off its India and Israel units and spun off its Hong Kong and Macau business. It also said its Thai partner CAT Telecom will take over its business in the country by the first quarter of this year.

It was left with with unprofitable operations in Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and Sri Lanka, Bloomberg newswires reported.

The newswire quoted an analyst as saying that in taking the telecom unit private Hutchison is taking the view that its firms are undervalued and could perhaps spin them off after they become profitable.

According to Hutchison International stock exchange filings its Sri Lanka subscribers had grown to 563,000 by September 2009 from 536,000 a quarter earlier after falling steeply in the first quarter from 722,000.

Sri Lanka's mobile market is shared between Dialog Telekom, a unit of Malaysia's Axiata, Mobitel a unit of local fixed access operator Sri Lanka Telecom, and Tigo, a unit of Emirates based Etisalat and India's Bharti Airtel.

The larger operators are moving into mobile broadband and value services as a price war has pushed operators into losses. Hutchison Sri Lanka says it will focus on voice and text messaging.

"In the foreseeable future voice and text messages will generate the lion's share of revenues for celco's here," the official said.

"Broadband is expensive to invest and takes a long time to pay back. Celco's like other businesses have to make money and do justice to shareholders."

Sri Lanka's price war started with the entry of Bharti Airtel, which saw existing operators slashing prices starting with a package aimed at state workers by Mobitel.