Irish-owned, Jamaica-based telecoms group Digicel generated revenue of USD539 million in the three months ended 30 June 2019, representing a year-on-year decline of 1%. EBITDA, meanwhile, dropped 2% to USD244 million. The figures were published by Irish news site The Independent, with the report citing a person familiar with the group’s results; the weakened performance has been blamed on foreign exchange movements.
In operational terms, Digicel’s subscriber total dropped 5.5% on an annualised basis, which has been linked to ‘regulatory requirements in Papua New Guinea’. TeleGeography notes that the deactivation of unregistered SIM cards for users in PNG’s main urban provincial centres commenced on 1 August 2018, with SIMs in administrative and district centres switched off from 1 January 2019. Any other areas not covered by the process saw their SIM cards deactivated from 1 May 2019.