Telikom unveils wireless services

From The National, Papua New Guinea’s leading daily newspaper

 

TELIKOM is making cheaper, high quality wireless telephone and internet services available to its customers.

With its wireless phone launched recently, customers can make a call at peak hours for 6toea a minute, and 3toea a minute during off peak hours. The new service started at 10pm last Thursday.

Last Thursday afternoon, the company announced it now has on the market wireless high speed internet, initially for Port Moresby and Madang only.

Lae will be hooked up this week, and the other major towns thereafter.

Telikom chief executive officer Peter Loko unveiled the new product to reporters during a press conference last Thursday.

Customers will have access to high speed internet access, which downloads data at speeds of up to 1Mb/second via the wireless telephone at home.

It is available through Telikom’s X’cess fixed wireless network.

Also, a simple USB plug-in device provides wireless access to the internet at high speed through any enabled laptop or PC, separate from the phone, anywhere within range of the fixed wireless signal, which is about 50km.

Telikom estimates that 90,000 new customers will join the fixed wireless network by the end of the year, and they have the opportunity to have the internet access on either a medium speed of 153kbps, or on the High Speed Telikom plan.

“This is exciting new technology, but simple, and available at low cost to Papua New Guinea grassroots as well as big business, and it is being taken up with great enthusiasm,” Mr Loko said.

“The high speed wireless access speed and wireless portability has an introductory special price of K199, plus a monthly fee, and has 1Mb per second download capability, anywhere in PNG within range of our wireless network.

“It’s revolutionary, it’s cheap, and it is going to bring thousands of people into wireless internet access,” Mr Loko said.

Asked if the move to the wireless technology would mean rendering the fixed and cable network obsolete, Mr Loko said the market would decide that.

“We’ve invested a lot in our cable network, and we want to continue to use it for a return on investment, but the market will decide for us which way we go, down the track.”

Telikom recently invested a lot of money to upgrade its cable network. The new wireless internet product will be the envy of other internet service providers.

Asked if Telikom’s entry into the market would create regulatory issues, company officials said they were “within the legal and regulatory boundary”.