Pacific Magazine > Daily News

No Interconnection For PNG Mobile Phone Users

By Alexander Rheeney in Port Moresby
Thursday: January 31, 2008

Papua New Guinea mobile phone users failed to interconnect today despite assurances by government-owned Telikom PNG Ltd it would open its lines today to users of rival network Digicel.

Telikom CEO Peter Loko assured mobile phone users their fixed lines and mobile customers of their subsidiary B-Mobile will be ready to interconnect and call Digicel customers today.

But Irish-owned Digicel says it is standard practice at all its global operations that its interconnection equipment is tested over a four-day period to ensure components such as its billing structure is functioning.

Telikom’s decision to defer plans to join their networks in Mt Hagen, Lae and Kokopo has also not gone down well with Digicel.

“Put simply, Telikom and Digicel have agreed to join their networks at four places around the country. Telikom however appears to be concentrating only on Port Moresby and is not ready in the other three places, namely Lae, Hagen and Kokopo. Digicel wishes to ensure that all its customers are able to make and receive calls from Telikom and B-Mobile,” said Digicel (PNG) Ltd CEO Kevin O’Sullivan.

But Loko says extra points of interconnection were not necessary to achieve full interconnection between the two networks and could be done in the future – depending on the traffic and potential congestion problems.

“Extra points of interconnection are only required in the future to reduce potential congestion. They are not required for Telikom to achieve full interconnection of both mobile and fixed line on January 31,” he said

It is understood the establishment of interconnection equipment in the three regional centers (including Port Moresby) would have tackled any congestion problems experienced by both networks.

In a bid to fast-track interconnection, Digicel initially offered to use its network to reroute all B-Mobile and Telikom traffic from throughout the country to Port Moresby, where it will then be interconnected by the Government-owned company.

It also offered interconnection equipment free-of-charge to Telikom to temporarily set up and use in Lae, Hagen and Kokopo while its engineers worked on their own radio link machines.

But Telikom turned down both offers and has opted to reroute all fixed line and mobile phone calls via satellite to Port Moresby where it will then be interconnected to the Digicel network.

There are fears Telikom’s Boroko exchange center will not be able to cope with simultaneous fixed line and mobile calls by B-Mobile’s 380,000 customers as well as Digicel users, who O’Sullivan recently said could be as many as 2 million Papua New Guineans.

It is understood Digicel commenced its internal tests today and interconnection is not likely to happen until 12am next Monday (PNG time).