Internet rates placed by internet service providers in Papua New Guinea are too high, says an internet expert.
Former Telikom acting chief executive officer Noel Mobiha (pictured) said there was still room for improvement in terms of provision of internet services. Speaking during launching of internet exchange point (IXP) by Telikom PNG Ltd on Tuesday, he said: “We were the 67th country to register on the country code top level domain (CCTLD).
“We still here and everybody is gone. Our costs are too high.
“When you talk about IXP, I will smile because I will be interested to see if ICCC can price this thing in to make it work, a little bit more meaningful for the people. I think the ISPs (internet service providers) that came in brought economics of this issue, in terms of the project.
“I think we need to do it a little bit better. At the end of the day, what we all want to do is bring the cost down. So if you remember some years ago, the cost of internet per megabyte is 50 toea per megabyte.
“That link into Melbourne in 1991/1993, it would take about 10 minutes to download one megabyte file. It takes less than five seconds now. Those are the comparative download speeds that we are looking at.
“You will see that the costs have gone down from that value to 25 toea and now it is sitting at 2-3 toes per megabyte, depending on which plan you will get, which company you will look at. So we are still going down but I still know the cost can be much lower than that. The margins that are put on this cost are much higher.”
Former Telikom acting chief executive officer Noel Mobiha (pictured) said there was still room for improvement in terms of provision of internet services. Speaking during launching of internet exchange point (IXP) by Telikom PNG Ltd on Tuesday, he said: “We were the 67th country to register on the country code top level domain (CCTLD).
“We still here and everybody is gone. Our costs are too high.
“When you talk about IXP, I will smile because I will be interested to see if ICCC can price this thing in to make it work, a little bit more meaningful for the people. I think the ISPs (internet service providers) that came in brought economics of this issue, in terms of the project.
“I think we need to do it a little bit better. At the end of the day, what we all want to do is bring the cost down. So if you remember some years ago, the cost of internet per megabyte is 50 toea per megabyte.
“That link into Melbourne in 1991/1993, it would take about 10 minutes to download one megabyte file. It takes less than five seconds now. Those are the comparative download speeds that we are looking at.
“You will see that the costs have gone down from that value to 25 toea and now it is sitting at 2-3 toes per megabyte, depending on which plan you will get, which company you will look at. So we are still going down but I still know the cost can be much lower than that. The margins that are put on this cost are much higher.”
Tags:
Tech News