Disruption a challenge: Digicel

By GLORIA BAUAI
THE Lae business community says disruptions to telecommunication following the September earthquake is an added challenge to businesses already struggling with the continuous power outages.
Digicel PNG, the largest telecommunication provider in the country now owned by Telstra Corporation Limited, is working on mitigating the issues.
Chief executive Colin Stone said they had to maintain their service through satellite, given the three different breakages in the international and national digital fiber-optic cables.
“We’re allowed to be satellite providers under our gateway licences,” he said.
“So Digicel PNG is the biggest buyer of the medium earth orbit satellite within PNG.
“We need to keep some of these things under our own control to support our customers with information and communications technology (ICT), and retail customers.”
Stone told members of the Lae Chamber of Commerce and Industry last week that as a retailer, it used DataCo, which owned the landing stations delivering sea cables capacity into PNG.
“All these (affected) cables are run by DataCo, the national wholesale supplier of telecommunications,” he said.
The cable repair maintenance depends entirely on this wholesaler and is outside the control of Digicel. A break in the Kumul submarine cable system that links into Lae had already impacted the city.
And the current break on the Australia to Guam Pipe Pacific Cable (PPC-1) about 32km offshore, further impacted businesses.
The 7.9 magnitude earthquake which hit Morobe last month caused two more breaks on the Kumul Submarine Cable.