By Emmanuel Narokobi - 4th September 2006

As always you see or learn something new when you travel. The latest interesting thing I saw was the iTunes pre-paid card which was being sold at Newsagents and shopping centres in Australia.

A pretty good idea I though, because without the need for a credit card and just like the B-Mobile pre-paid cards we are already used to, you can buy music on iTunes Australia for $1.69 a song. Basically you are given a PIN number which you enter into the iTunes Music Store and as seen below you are given your amount to spend. (I was left with $1.41 after my purchases)

So I started thinking maybe a company like Rapid Phones or CHM could sell the cards, so people in PNG could buy songs on the internet through the iTunes Music Store. But sadly I do not see this taking off too soon in PNG, especially with the majority of home internet users on dial up. I tested it out and it took me roughly 6 hours to download 4 tracks. That’s right, just 4 tracks, so maski for now.

What it does give me inspiration for though is that maybe one day we could have a PNG website or websites with pre-paid options for PNG internet users. This could be a viable option to credit cards for purchases on the internet. For example using pre-paid internet cards for e-commerce like software purchases and downloads, or maybe even for Easy-Pay with PNG Power so you don’t have to line up for so long in those queues after work at Stop N Shop.