Aspects of Mobile Phone Usage forSocioeconomic Development in Papua New Guinea

Abstract

Little data is available on mobile phone usage in Papua New Guinea (PNG). Up to 2007, under the government-owned Telikom monopoly, communities within Papua New Guinea were inaccessible due to limitations in communications connectivity (Mitchel 2008). Telikom supplied fixed phon services while its fully owned subsidiary company, B-mobile, provided mobile services. Telikom served only 64,000 fixed phone subscribers while B-mobile garnered a low 60,000 mobile phone users against the total population of seven million (O’ome 2010). At that time, the combined penetration rate of less than 2 per cent was lower than the indicators of many comparable developing countries.