Internet Issues in Papua New Guinea

For these series of posts, we at PNG eHow   will publish the Discussion Paper Published by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu with partnership with PNG NRI titled: Why Internet Prices in Papua New Guinea are High? All of the information is sourced from this publication . 

"Considerable improvements in PNG’s technological architecture have been made in recent
years. Deregulation has driven considerable improvements in competition, and the rollout
in 2008 of Digicel’s network has brought internet services to millions of previously unconnected
Papua New Guinean citizens.
Notwithstanding these improvements, PNG’s internet infrastructure appears to be reaching
its limits, and service outages are commonplace throughout the country. And although
penetration has improved considerably in recent years, it remains amongst the lowest in
the world.
In 2013, the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) ranked PNG’s internet affordability
at 163rd out of 169 countries, with an entry level fixed broadband package estimated
to cost 266% of gross national income (GNI) per capita. Since that time, internet
prices have fallen markedly — in 2014 NICTA estimated that the price of a 1GB package
ranged from around 20-80% of GNI per capita, while current estimates suggest a 1GB
package can be obtained for around 10% of GNI per capita. These dramatic price reductions
are likely to be driven by a number of factors, including reductions in the wholesale
price (which has fallen by around 70% over that time), and increased competition in the
retail market.
Nevertheless, we note that entry level internet packages still appear to be substantially
above the ITU’s benchmark required to accelerate internet penetration (less than 3-5% of
the average monthly income). Further, the costs of reliable internet services to businesses
remain substantial — moderate-to-high data usage packages cost many thousands of Kina
and the requirement for businesses to adopt redundancy solutions to manage intermittency
adds substantially to costs. Lack of reliability also results in numerous indirect costs to
retail and business customers.....the next article Title is listed below. Follow the link and read. 



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