Competition vital

COMPANIES and individuals competing in the same industry or field is good for the consumers.
The bad side is when an industry or business has no or less competition, we anticipate to see a monopoly. Competition in business is very important for several reasons. First, competition drives innovation.
Second, business competition brings better quality. Finally, business competition keeps price inflation in check.
This letter is in regards to communication in PNG.
Currently we have two players competing in this field of mobile communication, state owned company bmobile and Digicel PNG Ltd owned by Irish entrepreneur Denis O’Brien.
Currently Digicel PNG is taking the lead. What makes Digicel a front runner in this industry is customer linkage or connectivity.
That is what this Irish tech embraced and as a result Digicel PNG has more subscribers compared to bmobile and Telikom and its dominancy in this field.
Every corners of major urban centres and even remote and rural settings you will still see a tower erected by Digicel. The bottom line is Digicel is connecting the unconnected.
Digicel has more than 800 towers across the nation and now they are aiming to have 1,160 mobile phone towers across PNG, providing coverage to 100% of the population.
Our government is engaging Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. which is a Chinese multinational technology company that provides telecommunications equipment to erect Telikom towers across PNG.
So here we see that our government owns nothing and is spending millions of kina to hire an overseas firm to erect towers to ensure all citizens are connected in order to access services that this stated own entity (Telikom) is providing. This is completely a setback.
Our government must step up and fund bmobile to erect more towers to increase customer base or make way for GreenCom into the market to make this industry more competitive so users can choose for an affordable service between these firms.

Hanam Bill Sandu
Observer, LAE