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Papua New Guinea Mobile Phone Monopoly to End

Posted on: Wednesday, 18 January 2006, 06:00 CST

Text of report in English by Papua New Guinea Post-Courier website on 18 January

Pacific Mobile Communication's monopoly in providing mobile phone services will end next year as plans are under way to introduce two new mobile carriers.

The end of the monopoly will also mean the high costs of mobile phone calls may also see a drop and mobile phone services extended to other areas which do not have mobile phone signals.

Consumer watchdog the Independent Consumer and Competition Commission [ICCC] said it was preparing tender documents which it will issue in March to selected telephone companies from overseas and invite them to submit tenders to acquire one of the two new mobile licences.

Commissioner Thomas Abed said among other requirements, the new carriers would be required to roll out the new mobile network to all large and medium sized towns as well as to a large number of smaller population centres throughout the country.

"The introduction of competition in mobile networks will be of great benefit to all consumers with improvements in the quality and range of services, better prices and more pricing options and in particular a much wider mobile network coverage throughout many parts of the country," Mr Abed said.

"It is hoped that the new networks will be operational initially with limited coverage but which will quickly be expanded from the time the license are granted in March next year or very shortly thereafter.

"This assessment will be made by the ICCC against a selection criteria which will be set out in the tender documents to ensure the selection process is totally fair and as transparent as possible."

The government had approved the tender for the new carriers.

Source: BBC Monitoring Asia Pacific

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