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World Bank backs Digicel

THE World Bank has supported Digicel's investment in Papua New Guinea because the present fixed line penetration is only slightly more than 1% while mobile phone coverage is only 3%, ranking the country among those with the lowest tele-density worldwide.
The World Bank stressed that with Digicel's plans to construct and operate a nationwide GSM (Global System for Mobile communications) nationwide will have significant impact for both individuals and businesses.
"This Greenfield project will introduce competition in a low penetration market where the incumbent, Telikom PNG, currently exercises a monopoly over all fixed and mobile communication services.
"The project will offer a wide range of standard and value-added mobile services, given the poor state of the existing telecommunications infrastructure in the country," the World Bank said.
Digicel last week introduced a promotion offering two Nokia or Motorola handsets for the price of one at K99 that had encouraged thousands of customers to sign up with Digicel. The package included a free SIM card and a start-up call credits.
The new telco said in a statement that the objective of the promotion was to put affordable telecommunications within the reach of every Papua New Guinean.
It was estimated the on-going promotion was costing the company from K5.5 million to K6 million and was considered the largest ever sales promotion run in the country.
Vanessa Slowey, Digicel Pacific chief executive officer, said the promotion had thousands of customers sign up by lunchtime.
"The people of Papua New Guinea have been deprived of an affordable and reliable mobile telecommunications service for far too long,” she said.
She then reiterated that "we are not going away and Telikom and Pangtel need to know that Digicel is here to stay".
Digicel had invested K480 million and planned to further invest up to K1.2 billion in rolling out a state-of-the-art mobile telecommunications network in PNG.
The company boasted of its 24-hour customer care that was yet another first for customers in the country.

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