Bmobile urged to expand services

By CLARISSA MOI
INFORMATION Communication Technology Minister Timothy Masiu has urged bmobile to expand its services and coverage to more rural areas of Papua New Guinea.
“Prioritising for rural coverage is not only for service delivery but is a long term investment strategy for profitability and sustainability,” he said.
Masiu said this during the 5G network pre-launch ceremony in Port Moresby on Thursday.
“It goes with the saying that if we want to be key players, we have to satisfy the rural areas.
“Thus, this Government under the auspices of the ‘Take Back PNG, leave no child behind’ framework will support any telecommunications company investment for better coverage and better connectivity, including 5G implementation,” Masiu said.
National Information Communication Technology Authority (Nicta) chief executive officer Charles Punaha said one of the challenges in the country’s telecommunication sector was that although 90 per cent coverage was with one operator, there were still a lot of under-served and unserved areas. “As the minister (Masiu) has stated, there are a lot of areas in the country when you go and there is no coverage,” he said.
“More so, for a state-owned ICT operators, we have had serious issues with their compliance with the roll out obligations of their licence.
“So while we are talking about deploying 5G services, we have to get the fundamental things right.
“We have to provide the basic services to our people in many parts of the country. And to this effect, Nicta is also assisting though our universal access services where we provide subsidies for the operators to go in.”
In response, bmobile chief executive officer Athula Biyanwila said plans were in place to roll out services to the rural areas.
“We do have a plan to build more sites in the rural areas,” he said.
“So hopefully we can execute that plan next year.”