The National Newspaper By FRANK ASAELI
THE West New Britain provincial (WNBP) government, in its first step in delivering services to the people, paid K200,000 last Tuesday to Telikom PNG Ltd for the installation of VSAT satellite services within the province.
WNBP Governor Harry Humphreys and Telikom sealed the deal to have Telikom set up five VSAT (very small aperture terminals) terminals in selected areas of the province, opening up telephone and data services to areas which had previously been isolated. Mr Humphreys said this was a very significant day for his provincial government. “This is the first step we are taking towards enabling service delivery to our people in remote areas,” he said “To understand the significance, you need to understand the geography of this province: we have a small developed area on the north coast and a vast undeveloped area on the south coast and parts of the north coast of New Ireland,” he said.

Mr Humphreys said it is the WNBP policy as a government to address that imbalance as a priority, and obviously telecommunications is one to be addressed. He said with K3.2 million allocated for WNBP’s development programme, especially for offices and housing for public servants and local level government infrastructure, K1.6 million had been released already and on top of that, K250,000 for the VSAT terminals that would be installed in the more remote areas.

Telikom board director Clark Kuluniasi said for them, rural telecommunication is very important and they have a programme currently funded by government with K30 million. “But it really depends on the Finance Department,” he said.