IT provider urges 50% drop in rates

By ANCILLA WRAKUALE

 

INTERNET rates in PNG need to be dropped by 50% from its current price to give easy and convenient access to people, managing director of Data Nets Ltd Sundar Ramamurthy said, The National reports.

Ramamurthy said this at the emerging technologies information seminar at Crowne Plaza Hotel in Port Moresby yesterday with the theme "enabling emerging technologies to assist business".

He said the main challenge in accessing internet in PNG was capacity constraint and needed to have a high speed capacity for internet users.

Ramamurthy said new innovations such as the mobile broadband service like the recently launched Digicel's 3G broadband access was fantastic for the country.

He said so much excuse was put on high illiteracy as a hindrance to the expansion of internet services, "but if PNG wants to develop, we have to drop the internet price".

Ramamurthy said since the start of the company in 1993, it had grown immensely and had expanded its internet service to 30 towns in PNG apart from their main operating centres.

He added that he was also looking at expanding to other parts of the Pacific as this was one of his ambitions when he first started.

The seminar attracted some of the largest IT companies in the world such as Cisco Systems, NEC and American Power Conversion (APC) and the audience comprised of business houses, government departments, banks and NGOs.

The seminar topics were focused on giving an insight into the current and future technologies and how they were benefiting businesses in other parts of the world.