Following last week’s announcement that Papua New Guinea’s fixed line incumbent Telikom PNG had signed a deal for the deployment of a National Broadband Network (NBN) with Chinese vendor Huawei Technologies, Public Enterprise and State Investments Minister Ben Micah has said that the project will allow Telikom to better compete with other operators. According to local news source The National, following opposition to the plans Mr Micah stressed the need for development of Telikom’s infrastructure, saying: ‘Telikom at this stage really needs complete upgrade of its systems, copper wires … together with other telecommunication infrastructure, which were established in the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s … If we do not upgrade Telikom, this major state asset owned by the people of Papua New Guinea will be run down to the ground by Digicel’.
Meanwhile, seeking to counter national security concerns raised due to the involvement of Huawei, the minister said: ‘With regards to spying, I wouldn’t want to drag ourselves into an issue which should be best left to the Chinese and Americans’.