bemobile: We don’t want a price war

By BOSORINA ROBBY
CHIEF Commercial Officer of bemobile Alan Barry has applauded Digicel for reducing some of its rates after media reports pointed out the different off-net rates charged by both Telcos and stressed that “they do not want a price war”.
 “We want to thank the other network for also putting their rates back up on their website, and showing the changes in the rates,” he said.
 “However, the off-net rate for calling bemobile from their network is still K1.70 so we urge them to please reduce that rate to allow for fair, competitive rates for the people to choose.
“So, we do not want a price war, we just need the off net rates to be fixed so that we can give people a choice.”
bemobile had reduced its off-net rates from 99t to 79t per minute, while Digicel charges K1.70 to call from its network to bemobile.
Barry said by having a high off-net call rate, its competitor was taking away benefits from bemobile customers by not receiving calls from Digicel users due to the cost of the call.
“By charging a high off net call rate, the other network is effectively barring us from competing with them,” he said.
“This is the basis of our submission for a public inquiry to the regulator National Information and Communications Technology Authority in which we hope that the other network could reduce their prices and allow us a level playing field to compete,” he said.
“I applaud Digicel for bringing key network communication in PNG, from which bemobile was able to be created to give the PNG citizens choices on which networks to support.
Barry said the public inquiry on off-net call rates between bemobile and Digicel was so that all telco operators should charge a level off-net pricing to give customers a choice.
“By charging a high off net call rate, the other network is effectively barring us from competing with them,” he said.
“And it works in their case because they are a big network with more subscribers than us.
“The results of this inquiry will be released by the end of the month but everyone is allowed to view the submission on the NICTA website.”