Digicel Faces Loss of International Gateway in Papua New Guinea

Digicel is facing the threat of the loss of its own international gateway in Papua New Guinea after the government clarified that the state-owned telco, Telikom PNG still has the monopoly on such services.

"No general carrier rights will be granted to mobile carriers in respect of the fixed line network or the international gateway during phase 1," the Minister for Communication and Information Patrick Tammur said.

Phase 2 of the liberation of the local telecoms market will permit Digicel to operate its own gateway, but no time frame for that has been published.

Digicel has warned that in addition to higher costs, customers face delays in the delivery of international SMS or making calls due to capacity problems at Telikom's own gateway - although presumably the company could lease the capacity currently operated by Digicel to avoid this problem.

Last November, Digicel said that its network had contributed to the 0.7% growth to the Gross Net Production (GDP) of Papua New Guinea since its launch as the second mobile operator on July 20, 2007.

The PNG Minister for Treasury and Finance, Patrick Pruaitch, highlighted in his recent 2008 Budget presentation to Parliament that the "significant expansion" of mobile telecommunications had brought a major revision to the country's GDP in 2007. He also added that a further 0.7% growth of GDP is expected for 2008, under the assumption that competition in the mobile telecommunciation sector is allowed to continue to flourish.

Posted to the site on 2nd March 2008