By In light of the governments revised ICT Policy which you can read in detail here and here. Digicel PNG have come out with their press release on the revised policy.
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A monopoly on International Communications will mean poorer service and less competition
Wednesday, 26 March, 2008 – Port Moresby: Digicel, the fastest-growing mobile operator in the Pacific, has expressed concern about the impact on mobile consumers and the business community following the approval by the National Executive Commission (NEC) of the revised ICT policy which states that Telikom should have a monopoly to operate a single international gateway.
According to Kevin O’Sullivan, CEO of Digicel Papua New Guinea: “With only one gateway operating, people will experience higher calling rates, lower quality of calls due to network congestion as well as limited international roaming services. “
“a single failure at the Telikom International Gateway would isolate Papua New Guinean businesses from the global economy and the population from their family and friends abroad.” added O’Sullivan.
Digicel should be able to continue to operate its own International Gateway and continue to compete with the service that Telikom operates. Digicel, through the existing open competition in international telecommunication services, currently provides consumers with enhanced quality telecommunication services at affordable prices.
“To remove Digicel’s international gateway would be a step backward from the current open market approach. The people have tasted the benefits of competition and have the right to continue to enjoy those benefits. These benefits speak for themselves, lower prices, better quality, increased coverage and introduction of new services such as the ability to travel to 87 countries and use your Digicel PNG mobile number.”
Digicel points to the recent example in the Middle East when submarine cables in the Mediterranean were severed last month, resulting in a breakdown of internet access for people in Egypt, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and other areas of the region.
A similar situation occurred in the Caribbean in May 2007 when an undersea cable was cut in the Caribbean Sea affecting Guyana, Trinidad and the French West Indies. As the incumbent telecommunications company in Guyana, GT&T, has a monopoly through that single cable on international calls, Guyana was completely shut off from the rest of the world with local business experiencing significant financial losses.
The revised ICT policy, as approved by the National Executive Commission (NEC) on February 13, effectively grants Telikom a monopoly on the international gateway. Digicel advocates an ICT policy that is pro-competition and which places the interests of customers first. Competition in the mobile communications market delivers state-of-the-art networks with innovative services at affordable prices to the people. The transformation of Telikom must be driven by competition and customer choice not protectionism and monopolies.
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Disclosure: Digicel PNG is a website client of Masalai Communications
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March 29, 2008 at 8:51 pm
coconutwireless
Check out this post:
It includes links to an NY Times article on how European regulators are trying to enforce what you’re talking about here.
The buzzword is ‘functional separation’… prying away control of networks from existing monopolies.
The current round of liberalization in telcom in Fiji will not mean much if FINTEL continues to hold onto its monopoly as the only internet gateway.
Increasingly, it feels like Digicel was thrown to us as a consolation prize, because they will not do anything about the internet
On a personal note, thank you very much for posting comments on Coconut Wireless… been reading your stuff for a while now… good stuff, all of it.
March 30, 2008 at 4:11 am
Emmanuel
Thanks heaps CW for the support and thanks for putting my link on your blog. Our blog discussions are just one of the many benefits of information sharing through the availably of internet access, albeit at ridiculous costs.
Although mobile phone services do impact on the economy and no doubt Digicel has achieved that here in PNG. It will only be when internet access is made cheaper and practically available to all walks of life that we will see real strides being taken in development.
I guess as you’ve pointed out, Digicel is a key tool in the World Bank’s arsenal in driving ‘functional separation’. But currently only at the mobile phone level. I imagine that you have to start somewhere and when dealing with governments like ours in PNG, you can only go forward in baby steps.
So when can we make the next baby steps towards universal internet access? I hope soon, but the gateway issue is a major part of competition for anyone trying to bring cheaper/faster internet to PNG or Fiji.
The way I see it until the governments are ready to allow competition at the gateway level, then we will not see any change soon to internet services. In the short term however I’ve been wondering whether a pure play ISP could be cheaper without all the staff and extra stock in trying sell PC’s and related IT services. If we had an ISP that sold nothing but internet time, maybe we could get prices lower, although the challenge in that would be to build scale to truly be an economical business model.