Digicel Broadband Internet in a League of Its Own

The lowest prices in the internet market compared to the rest of the ISPs by any stretch of the imagination.

Mobile Data Plans	Monthly Fee		Data Bundle in MB	Out of Bundle Rate per MB
	Black Berry	Other Devices		Peak Hours (8am to 8pm)	Off Peak Hours (8pm to 8am)
Pay as you Go	Nil	K0.00	Nil	K0.22	K0.16
Data Silver	K70.00	K35.00	220	K0.22	K0.16
Light	K184.00	K149.00	1000	K0.22	K0.16
Active	K284.00	K249.00	2000	K0.22	K0.16
Heavy	K484.00	K449.00	4000	K0.22	K0.16

The Digicel broadband internet dongle is "in a league of its own" for the following reasons:

1.       Doesn’t give any installation and network connectivity bugs unlike the BeMobile dongle.

2.       Downloading speeds is way superior to any ISP in town.  For instance, it takes 10 minutes to download an 11MB file from the internet over a corporate network with an average ISP whilst it took less than 2 minutes to download the same file via Digicel’s broadband network using the broadband dongle.

3.       In terms of cost Digicel’s broadband internet @ 22toea per megabyte at peak hours and 16toea for off peak hours is the cheapest in town for prepaid access compared to rest of the ISPs. Even better, ISPs or individuals can sign up for Digicel’s postpaid service with downloads @ 11toea per megabyte.

4.       The Digicel dongle also has features for users to send/receive SMS messages. This is the most fantastic feature in an office setting where sending an SMS text message or storing contacts is as easy as sending an email.

Telikom’s dongle in terms of speed and cost is neck and neck with Digicel. However, its CDMA SMS feature doesn’t have interconnectivity with Digicel and BeMobile one is not able to send SMS messages to mobile phones. SMSes can only be sent to Telikom’s CDMA devices including handsets and devices.

BeMobile was doing very well and should have been the first to introduce mobile hotspots on Huawei mobile handsets or introduced Huawei MiFi devices that can provide wireless hotspots within a radius of 10 meters. It has missed an opportunity to compete with Digicel on level playing ground and now will play catch up.

Digicel’s Broadband internet is a big win for small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in Port Moresby, Lae, Hagen and Kokopo for its affordability and the added benefit to send and receive SMS messages just like how emails work.  Digicel's rates are comparable to at least the expensive or high level rates in the Australian internet market.

BeMobile should consider buying a struggling ISP so that it can do the whole caboodle in communications from voice to data and even develop its own fully pledged communications ecosystem through sale of laptops and computers so that it can compete neck and neck with Digicel/Data Nets and Telikom/Telinet. This will help to stem an expected mass exodus to Digicel for the second time. BeMobile did well by lowering its call rates to being the lowest intra-network but may have lost an opportunity to put its foot down and sell its internet dongle products in developing its internet service business as a differentiation factor from Digicel.