Papua New Guinea’s Telikom PNG has acquired capacity on PNG DataCo’s fibre-optic cable between Madang and Port Moresby, local news outlet The Post Courier reports. The two parties inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) earlier this week (on 31 May), enabling both Telikom PNG and PNG DataCo to ‘make available domestic and international cable capacity to each other for their respective infrastructures under normal commercial arrangements’.
Telikom acting chief executive officer Xavier Victor was cited as saying that under the MoU his company will use capacity from DataCo to support both its 4G LTE network and those of its subscribers in the path of the optical ground cable. ‘We’ve asked [DataCo] to use one lane of the highway that they have built from Madang up to the Highlands region and down to Port Moresby exclusively for our customers to use,’ the executive noted.
For its part, DataCo managing director Paul Komboi highlighted the enhanced cooperation that it expects to see as a result of the deal, saying: ‘We will access Pipe Pacific Cable 1 [PPC1] that is currently managed and operated by Telikom, we will acquire capacity from there and then redistribute through the fibre network that we have for accessibility to any carriers or any clients with the licenses that is given by the National Information and Communication Technology Authority (NICTA).’