Coral Sea cable to cut internet rate costs by 20 per cent

INTERNET costs will come down by around 20 per cent once the Coral Sea cable from Sydney is completed next year, says DataCo managing director Paul Komboi.
He said the internet wholesale rate would be reduced for internet providers, meaning cheaper internet for Papua New Guineans.
“For the wholesale, the price is around K1250 per megabit per month,” Komboi said.
“What we will be selling at DataCo is around K800 per megabit per month.
“That is the price we are looking at in terms of wholesale of internet.
“We are encouraging most of the internet service providers and licensed operators to come to DataCo and start purchasing wholesale capacity from us.
“There is still some work to be done on the regulatory side for the cost reduction to be passed onto the consumer.
“We leave it to NICTA but from our side we are already reducing the price.”
Komboi said the model for the pricing would be based on recovering the cost of the infrastructure for both domestic and international infrastructure.
“We are looking at between now and 2019 a reduction of at least 20 per cent of the pricing,” he said.
“If we get the domestic cable operational before 2019, then we should be able to see some reduction in price and then we can continue to drop at least about 20 per cent a year onwards.
“For the first phase, we are building the cable from Port Moresby to Madang.
“That is via Alotau, Popondetta and Lae.
“We will also connect Vanimo, Wewak, West New Britain, Kavieng, Manus and Buka as well as Daru and Kerema.
“That will be done when the economics of it is right.”