MINISTER for State Enterprises Arthur Somare regrets that the issue of mobile phone licences for Digicel and Greencom was “featured prominently” in the media yesterday.
“I gave an emphatic ‘no’ in Parliament on reports that the Government will revoke these licences. I couldn’t be any clearer than this. For some reason, this message does not seem to be getting through,” he said.
He was referring to a statement by Digicel expressing doubt that the Government would not revoke the licences.
Digicel believes that Telikom’s monopoly may be reinstated on Feb 14 next year.
Mr Somare maintained, however, that under the State-owned Enterprises (SOE) reform programme, the cabinet had endorsed a staged approach to competition in the telecommunication sector.
He said the National Executive Council’s decisions had been consistent and dealt with the introduction of the competition and the approval and subsequent fine tuning of ICT Policy 2007.
“Nowhere does the NEC state it will revoke these licences,” he reiterated.
On Tuesday, he told Parliament that subscribers to the new service providers should rest assured that their rights would be preserved and protected.
“The people have tasted and embraced competition that this Government introduced and it is not and never has been this Government’s intention to deny our people of choice.
“There is no U-turn. The mobile phone licences will not be revoked,” he said.

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