The following is a discussion thread on Sharp Talk, which began on Saturday 11th Feb and has seemed to have died off today. It started off from a post I placed relating to an excerpt from an ADB report which stated:
“Internet access is similarly channelled through one internet gateway, with the license being held by Tiare, a subsidiary of Telikom. Five private internet service providers (ISPs) distribute internet services throughout the country, but are not allowed to have their own international gateways.
Internet penetration is limited by the availability and quality of the landline. Tiare also provides internet service in competition, which has solicited calls of anticompetitive behavior from some ISPs claiming that Tiare is exploiting its exclusive access to the gateway to undercut the competition. Facilities in the country are limited, as is growth. ISPs interviewed expressed the opinion that the Tiare monopoly is severely restricting the growth of the internet service industry in PNG…”
ADB: Foundation for the Future: A Private Sector Assessment for Papua New Guinea (2008)
Co-incidentally however, today the CEO of Telikom was suspened by the government.
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Ricardo Timapen
I say create competition on the gateway industries and regulate it. We could feel and see what competition does for instance digicel and telikom.
John Kassman PNG is special and makes everything really expensive. Our mobile rates are the highest in the world while internet is probably really out of this world.
Our closest neighbour. Aust you get r
3 gig internet for 50 bucks while in PNG you get only 300 MB for the same.
The gate way is not the issue, the ones that control and owne it are the issue.
Nathan Dingu Govt should open up and just TAX it.(much better way of earning money.)
Pom Pom Citizen It makes no sense at all for Telikom to have exclusivity on the gateway. It’s time for PNG to open it up or else we will be further left behind in the information age. If we thought mobile communication changed the country…wait til we see Internet opened up. Great & bad changes will come but at least we will be moving forward.
Mayford Sihinwe Telikom is slack and not visionary. Exactly like what it did to bemobile allowing digicel to get a foothold. The equation of money making in the ICT industry is simply (Ax = R) where A = No of subscribers x = Price and A = Revenue. That equation means that the more subscribers you have the more money you make. This equation also allows for the fact that by reducing your price carefully you can increase your subscriber base by making the service more affordable and therefore you make more money. Furthermore, lower prices will allow subscribers to increase their activity on the network making them buy more and you make more revenue. Telikom missed that Logic with Bemobile and Digicel capitalised. It’s sad to say they’re missing it again with their data service. High cost means small subscriber base and that’s not healthy for an ICT business.
Saturday at 5:18pm · Like ·
5
Graham Weston Telikom has been ripping PNGeans off for years. Why does it cost $ 2.50 / minute to ring Australia, when you can ring from Australia to the USA for abt 10 cents a minute. A few years ago, Telikom was backcharging Telstra Australia 80 cents a minute for incoming calls to PNG. Then without warning, Telikon put this charge for incoming calls up to $ 2.50 / minute, and tried to say that it was Telstra Australia that had increased this fee. Telstra Australia then put adds in the Post Courier and the National sayint that it was Telikon that had put this charge up. Telikom never responded to this. Telikom has been ripping PNGeans off for years, and will continue to do so. If a political party was smart, they would run for office with a policy to reduce the phone charges, i’ll bet they would win office.
William Уильям وليام PNG’s current international connections are tenuous and low capacity. With its monopoly firmly in place, Telikom PNG faces little incentive to develop and improve these services.
PNG Government still seems committed to restraining the prompt opening up of full competition (including of gateways) and for data services, continuing to handicap opportunities for business development and the wider community to benefit from more accessible, cheaper and reliable services.
Robert Griffin exactly Mayford Sihinwe..d mre subscriber base u av d mre revenue u generate..subcriber base cn only increase if low rate charges r offerd..with the curent Tiare monopoly d rates charged by ISPs r quite outrageous..i agree wif Nathan Dingu..lets open up d IGW industry bring in competition n tax it..
Marsh Narewec what about Telikom’s PPC-1Pipe Cable System from Madang to Guam/Sydney…would it provide alternate gateway..what is the status of this project now..
Clement Yang Telikom and PNG govornment have been sleeping for too long in this very vital technology and they need to do now//The future govornment have to changes is communication monopoly in PNG. we meed more competition in our country. its a healthy business for country as a whole….
Stephen Vele fast, reliable and afforadable internet connection will be the best thing to happen for PNG businesses… wake up govt/telikom…
John Kassman Digicel has done its share in providing mobile service to most of rural PNG, 3G technology is now being tried in the main centres in PNG but needs a good gate way to reach the rest of the world as well.
Communication can open up this country, imagine a kid in Telefomin being able to do E learning using the intranet and connect to the Divine Word University data base.
While a medic in Gumini can access data in PNG or the rest of the world to good diagnosis and give the right treatment to his patent. Farmer in Goroka and Hagen make direct contact with the buyer on price and quantity required and the list goes on.
PNGSDP has just completed 58 communication towers linking Daru all the way to Telifomin while Digicel has installed its system at its own cost and the network will be upgraded over time to 3G, other donors want see the great need and want to invest but need a good reliable body to do this.
The gate way issue was what Telikom, BMobile were fighting over and still are.
SP just imagine if we could encourage all mobile users switch our phones for a day causing massive losses.
Think about it, these executives live off the money the poor grass roots pay for a call and don’t give a pigs ars where it comes from. ” Its the poor subsiding the rich again” let’s push for bigger broard ban, bigger gate way and cheaper rates. Its like our government, we deserve better.
Nathan Dingu i thot dicicel aquired full licence last year – whu aren’t they using it?
John Kassman It will take time to upgrade and tell me what do they do with the current equipment that cost a lot as well.
Graham Weston William, abt 8 years ago, may be even longer, the old cable from Sydney to Guam was re-routed to POM. This would, in Telikoms words , increase the capacity and bandwidth to PNG by some 400 % ( from memory ). Has anybody ever thought of the possibility that Tiare are purposely throttling the network, meaning you have to spend more time online to download the same amount of data. That also means that they are making a lot more money out of you. Has anybody done a speed test in POM and Lae , just to see what speed is available.
William Уильям وليام What happened to the ICT policy reform where PNG Government approved the submission supposedly committed to competition under a phased approach. In reality, it seems to be more about stepping backwards and preventing competition and protecting Telikom from a more pro-active competitor, and deferring for an unspecified time the date when competition will extend from mobile phones to other ICT services. I think PNG lacks clearly defined National ICT Strategies, Political Will to drive the strategies and good monitoring & evaluation strategies to ensure the success of an ICT Strategy.
Emmanuel Narokobi
Graham Weston Seems unbelievable, but this was in the Post Courier on the 16th December, 2011.PNG ranks ahead of UK, Aust, NZPNG ranked 35th for Internet download speeds ahead of UK, Australia and New Zealand
Telikom PNG encouraged by Net Index Internet Speed Rankings Ookla, a global leader in broadband testing and web-based network diagnostics, has ranked Papua New Guinea’s Internet speeds at 35th for downloading, and 41st for uploading, placing it ahead of countries such as the UK, Australia and New Zealand. A total of 172 countries are tracked by Ookla.
According to Ookla’s net index the results were obtained by analysing test data between 11th November, 2011 and 10th December, 2011 from 2, 232 unique IP addresses (Internet Protocol addresses) taken in the country.
The speed test by Ookla is based on upload and downloads speed of individual users in various countries with Net Index providing averages and details around consumer broadband upload and download speeds. The Net index is available on the following websites http://www.netindex.com/download/allcountries/ andhttp://www.netindex.com/upload/allcountries/.
Telikom PNG’s Chief Executive Officer, Peter Loko, welcomed the rankings stating that “Telikom PNG, as the country’s Internet Gateway Service Provider, is encouraged by Ookla’s independent findings that confirm efforts to improve Internet service delivery into PNG were paying dividends”.
“Telikom PNG will continue to expand its Internet infrastructure to connect more urban and rural communities to the Internet as we can make a real difference to the lives of our people”.
“Telikom recently completed installation of its 3G Wireless Internet Services in Pomio district, East New Britain and Buin, within the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, which will enable these rural communities to enjoy faster Internet at speeds offered by Telikom,” Mr Loko remarked.
He added apart from the 3G wireless network expansion, Telikom is also rolling out its fibre optic network that will enable faster wired broadband services around the country.
Ookla’s Net Index enlightens the Internet community by anonymously analysing and compiling massive data sets of information for purposes of benchmarking Internet quality.
From the download index ranking, United States was ranked 33rd with speeds of 12.3Mbps, PNG ranked 35th at 11.7Mbps, UK ranked 37th at 11.48Mbps, Australia ranked 48th with speed of 9.0Mbps while New Zealand ranked 50th with speeds of 8.81Mbps.
(http://www.postcourier.com.pg/20111216/news16.htm)
Pom Pom Citizen Nathan dingu, Digicel leases bandwidth from Telikom/Tiare…everyone (except for vsat suppliers) leases thru the monopoly (Telikom/Tiare)….I still can’t believe this article ranking PNG so high. The reality tells a different story all together.
Graham Weston I suspect that these rankings are for leased lines, as per the prices shown by Telikom. Sure ur speeds are going to be high for a leased fibre optic connection, and the prices reflect that. Here in Oz, a leased fibre optic line ( restricted to 30 mbps ) will set you back abt $ 10,000 / month. So usually they are only leased by big corporations ( mining companies, banks and the like ), the average consumer could not afford them. I know when i lived in Kiunga, our average download speed on dial up was about 1.6 kbps. So i’m sure for general consumer internet connections, there is no way that PNG could be so high up in the rankings.
Amos Ovasuru Telikom is so stupid I choke in disgust just thinking about the opportunity they are squandering, they have a Govt approved monopoly on a commodity with off the charts demand and what do they do? they sit on their hands is what they do, all they have to do is improve accessiblity and lower costs and the product sells itself, the citifone network(Wimax) could be a surfers paradise with high speed low cost data connection and Telikom would be making a bundle and instead they still want to compete in the mobile communication market with their half assed network.
Emmanuel Narokobi ”The PNG National Executive Council (NEC) has directed the Minister for Public Enterprises, responsible for the IPBC and Telikom, to:
• liaise with both the Minister for National Planning and the Minister for Communications and their respective departments, to formulate an appropriate telecommunication Broadband Policy to complement the National ICT policy; and
• commission a detailed Broadband Implementation Study for the ownership and operation of broadband backbone assets in PNG, including future network rollout, in collaboration with the Minister for National Planning and the Minister for Communication and their respective departments; and
• report to the NEC on the conclusions and recommendations of the Broadband Implementation Study.These initiatives aim to:
• significantly increase the capacity and coverage of the domestic backbone or backhaul transmission infrastructure;
• significantly increase utilization of international capacity; and
• promote the creation of an efficient wholesale market.Additionally, NICTA has refarmed the spectrum in the 900 MHz band and has reassigned this spectrum to existing mobile operators in a way that will provide for additional wireless broadband services within the spectrum available in this band”
(Setting National Broadband Policies, Strategies & Plans – By Dr. Bob Horton: http://www.itu.int/ITU-D/treg/broadband/MinicasestudyBBPapuaNG.pdf)
Ricardo Timapen why 50% penetration by 2020? whats so hard? customers? this is really shocking!!!
Mayford Sihinwe I’ll say it again. Drop the prices, increase your subscriber base and upgrade your network. If telikom is smart, it will run a fibre optic main backbone line to all suburbs and have all house connected to its back bone via cat5 cables. Have internet jacks installed in all houses like power jacks. Whoever wishes to use internet subscribe and pay their access time via prepaid or postpaid arrangement. Telikom must be proactive and by bringing the infrastructure to the people will make the people want to use the service especially when it is made affordable. From experience it is more convenient to use a computer for internet access than a mobile phone. They have a golden opportunity on their hands right now!!
Amos Ovasuru The Wimax technology is capable of carrying alot more data load than Telikom is currently utilising, why do they have to throttle it to consumers using the evdo dongle, it is touted as superior technology to Digicels Producct and yet it is so much slower, whats up with these guys do they have anyone in management that thinks business or mentality blo public servant strong tumas.
Arnold Davies Patiken In Telikom, you can not encourage change when people in the ‘A’ team can not accept change. NEC needs to change the executive & board team.
Barney Tasol Much broader and faster expansion of knowledge thus development depends very much also to easy accessibility and cheap cost of www. When Telikom continues to prevent other GW holders, basically it’s preventing you and I and the rest of PNG from progressing forward. One can not continue to deprive people of the right to information that developing countries like PNG needed so much. I agree that govt must step in and remove that monopoly on the gateway (GW) license. Something that can contribute in a big way also to achievig Vision 2050 is also the access to information super highway being cheaply and easily available to all PNGeans.
Information or knowledge is power! can easily project change is a more faster way then foolish govt developments plans that take ages to crawl out to all of us…
Paul Barker but under the new ICT law that monopoly is meant to have disappeared…
Barney Tasol That’s right Paul. Why is it that Telikom is still keeping others out?
Rex Duma Pat Paura Technically, in order to have a gateway license…you need to operate a commercial HUB in the country. No company has a PNG hub apart from Oceanic Broadband Solutions…. 🙂
Emmanuel Narokobi
Paul Barker there’s probably 3 main issues here:1) Telikom’s inconsistent Internet service, poor customer service and generally high pricing to customers,
2) Telikom’s pricing monopoly for wholesale Internet which makes it impossible for ISP’s to provide a better/cheaper service because they are buying wholesale Internet from Tiare/Telikom
3) Lack of Private Sector Investment in the sector
Amos Ovasuru RDPP, mate 20 mbps is awesome for a single user if you ask me, thats more than 1Gb per min
Robert Griffin I believe Telikom is in the process of implementing MPLS technology. correct me if I am wrong…
Rex Duma Pat Paura
Arnold Davies Patiken, MPLS is an advanced form of ADSL. Telikom needs to change from Analogue to IPl before this can happen. 85% of Telikom’s connections still on analogue which will take at least 5 years plus more millions of investment into fiber to have get the digital aspect working well.
But the main point is we can have a wide network within the country but if they all going on limited trunk out of the coutry….it’ll still be an on-going issue.
What Telikom needs to do is to invest into a “Brand New Fiber Cable” out of the country…period!!
Robert Griffin so Rex wats ds new player in d Satellite market dat m hearn bout?? exactly Rex..
Rex Duma Pat Paura Oceanic Broadband Solutions not new here… building a commercial HUB in PNG is new….only Telikom operates a commercial HUB, now Oceanic has one too
Soxx Muitech You can’t compare MPLS and Wimax. One’s transport and the other is service/physical. One deals with data packets switching and the other just delivers data. MPLS is basically an improvement from ATM’s while Wimax doesn’t do packet switching, it simply transport using IP based tech……if you know what I mean
I’d go with the Fibre cable dragged from the US through Guam and terminated at madang and the nto Sydney. No data conversion, just straight up QoS delivery!! Ahhh?!! From madang, we would route all the fibre direct to every province terrestrially and setup their own gateways, even the island provinces too.
thats T1 in the flash!!….Ohhhh Telikom(PNG) and here I am wondering where you got your rocket science degree from
Ben Yamai The best thread I’ve read here in a long while. Very informative for some of us not familiar with ICT. Keep the information flowing all.
Soxx Muitech
Rex: If only telikom paid me to run their data services infrastructure and the government abolish their petty monopoly on gateway routing. The only reasons why they made it a law is because they don’t have the capacity for real competition in this industry.
and to connect to that big-ass fibre in madang is simple. Find a gateway provider in West Coast USA that has shares on the fibre and apply for the service. they provider will tell you which pair on the fibre trunk is your and from that point on wards, Bob’s your uncle
Marsh Narewec
Rex Duma Pat Paura…couple of companies are using PPC-1 PIPE Cable System i.e what Soxx mentioned..they are not using tiare gateway.. I know one of the aircraft company base in Madang does…
Soxx…I guess theoritically I can connect my copper telephone line to that Fibre cable in Madang or better still another fibre end is terminated at Ela Beach? i,e, will be only using 1-3? layer of the OSI model and thus would not need tiare???.. if that’s possible WHY telikom keep surpressing us moving from forward in terms of internet technology??
Emmanuel Narokobi
Soxx Muitech so what you’re saying is that we can lease space on the existing pipelines etc but pump through our own Internet?
Soxx Muitech, maybe we go partners in the data services with Telikom…heheheh ..if only they do that…. …..
Marsh Narewec, would be great if you can point us to that air craft company…so we can discuss with them on how that was made possibleGood question Manu… I have another HUB in Adelaide n Hong Kong….too easy to pump internet if I can get on that PIPE
Arnold Davies Patiken MPLS being an IP-based solution, rather than the copper-based ADSL; Telikom had already implemented the soft switches plus the fibre
around NCD to support the high speed bandwidths. The other task that requires major investment is the conversion of the analogue to digital radio systems along the PNG major radio links.On 2/13/12, Rex Duma Pat Paura
Goini Lydia Loko All its already an open market, anyone can apply under NICTA’s regulations…
Arnold Davies Patiken Bro Rex, the PIPE submarine cable have 20G capacity.Telikom is leasing bandwidths; therefore, consult Telikom wholesale sales team and secure link per your requirement. Since your hub is based at POM LNG site,
you will either use Telikom radio or sattellite (SkyEdge II) links
from Madang to POM or alternatively established your mini-satellite
hub at Madang to communicate with POM. The other option is carry your traffic from Madang to Hides, then use the LNG fibre optic cable into POM.On 2/14/12, Rex Duma Pat Paura
Soxx Muitech
Emmanuel: You really don’t have to rent a line from the actual PCC-1 itself, you subscribe to an existing service provider on the PCC-1 who currently provides global comms/inter-connectivity services (eg pacnet) for the type of connectivity service you want then create your own hub/DC/etc within the country and redistribute the service nationwide using your own ‘internal’ addressing, at your own price range. That is what Telikom would be doing, I would assume. And with a dedicated 10Gbps pipe for PNG with through-put at about 80%, I tell you, both of us can be rich in no time.
One thing you must know is that the speed at the gateway is not directly passed onto the customer/consumer level. The consumer level’s speed is determined by the internal infrastructure and technology of the local ISP providing the service.
I heard that rental is expansive for carrier services so you got to work on its Economy of Scale
You basically will become Telikom yourself but without the nationwide infrastructure
But first things first. Remove that one-gateway bullshit the GoPNG pulled on us
Satellite latency is an ‘act of God’ therefore science will never solve it. So science came up with fibre submarine cables
Emmanuel Narokobi
Goini Lydia Loko its true that the market is open now and
Paul Barker has also alluded to that. However the cost of bringing in a truly independent supply of Internet through an undersea cable is extremely expensive for any company. Hence the majority of this type of investment is made by Telco’s and Governments.Therefore what you end up having is the current situation where Telikom is the manager of this pipeline by virtue of it being government funded.So several options are available for ISP’s that want to compete:
1. Resell Telikom’s Internet
2. Resell Satellite Broadband (Hitron does this), or
3. Use Telikom’s pipeline infrastructure to sell an internet supply through it as mentioned by
Soxx Muitech
As you can see the cheapest option (1) involves Telikom and the (3)rd option also involves Telikom. So with the current financial level of companies in PNG, we would not have the finance to compete appropriately.
A (4)th option could be to encourage a big outside player to come in, like a Telstra/SingTel etc, but with our current poor infrastructure throughout the country again it appears to be a huge investment for any big Telco player. Hence mobile operators like Digicel have filled in that gap.
This all brings our arguments back to square one, where if Telikom were to reduce its rates (because it can and it is obviously getting it at international rates) that action by Telikom would have a more immediate and profound effect on our Internet Services in PNG as opposed to someone like Hitron or Digicel who primarily service the private sector.
Soxx Muitech Internet cabling can be done however you like. For towns with existing power poles, fibre optic clear at least 3m below the power-line. If we’re serious and have lots of money, we pull the fibers cross-terrestrial to all provinces and setup hubs there. BTW, Fiber Optic has no limitation in distance as compared to copper or RF and does not attenuate on its own like
Heck, we can even use the LNG pipelines to run the cables into the highlands regions!!!!!
Soxx Muitech Now. Can someone help me get a scholarship to go do my ICT degree at Swinburne please?
Rex Duma Pat Paura
Soxx Muitech, latency may be an issue….but for a country like PNG with it’s geographical terrains…it is the only saviour we have. You can do caching to assist with the latency and also do some web acceleration service that speeds up the process. But you correct…we need another fiber cable into the country…..into Port Moresby that is…
Mayford Sihinwe
Soxx Muitech is spot on. Fibre optic doesn’t attenuate or should I say its attenuation is negligible. That is because it uses light as the data carrying medium and that light bounces of the medium along its transmission part therefore less energy is absorbed in to the transmission medium (attenuation). For copper we have electrical resistivity which opposes current flow and causes high attenuation and signal loss over long transmission lines. Therefore fibre optic is ideal for data transmission over very long distances (terrestial) especially in urban areas and along the LNG pipes as Soxx Muitech suggested. Great info Soxx. Cheers.
Soxx Muitech
Rex ‘Geographical Terrain’ is a sales pitch for marketeers to sell satellite technology to PNG. Installation of this hypothetical fiber back-haul cross-country will be a costly but one off expense if done by the government. Repair/Maintenance would be a cheaper than renting from a Sat provider in the long run.
Rex Duma Pat Paura That is the Government is willing to foot the bill…..but the way things going… Government is not willing….sorry stret
Ricardo Timapen Awesome discussion so far in S.T in recent times. Thanks guys.
Soxx Muitech OK in ICT, you basically have 2 types of network inter-connectivity. 1 the Back-haul network 2. Service Network.
Back-haul network is that network where all other networks inter-connect. Telikom is a typical back-haul network (to some extent)Service Network is where client devices connect to the network. Typical service network would be Tower to mobile phone or ISP to Computer (Internet),etcOK, GoPNG, should only rent out the back-haul network in the country through Telikom. They shouldn’t be worried about managing bandwidth, carrier provision,etc. All they should do is collect rental on their infrastructure being used by the service provider. fixed monthly rentals whatever.
But before that, GoPNG should get some of those millions that was stolen from us thru tax and improve the infrastructure to standard. Once all this is place, you simply put out and ad saying “Network for rent!! Hurry!! Hurry!! while stocks last!!” and I bet you, some of the big guns in the telco bizzo will do a ‘shown-up in a hurrrey’ on our shore!!
Reeves Papaol The APNG2 “fibre optical” sea cable that was laid in late 2006 (I was at Ela Beach seeing the Alcatel boat pulling it away) and spliced in Sydney has a capacity of 1.1GBps…. this is under utilized at the moment.
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When the idea of protection for profits takes priority and services supress growth we must review our ethics to business practices and service to our people. PNG Industries have enjoyed the monopoly for many years taking and taking, this generation is not blind as we have experienced services in other moving economies. Time to shape up and tugging on emotions in marketing will not save a non performing below expectation service organization. I predicted these events in 2006 and wrote a report which was laughed at, today I guess the smile is turning to a frown. PNG Government needs to wisely take this country forward and map a new course.
NOw that there is a new CEO for TPNG, we hope that good things happen fast
Boom!!! Am blown by all the comments here!!! I wish if all this minds put together, we would change PNG in just a blink of an EYE… We would be millionairs over night as well!