Papua New Guinea’s National Executive Council (NEC) – essentially its cabinet – has approved the Pukpuk Connectivity Initiative, which it has described as one of the most important digital infrastructure approvals in the nation’s recent history.
The approval relates to the Australian Infrastructure Financing Facility for the Pacific (AIFFP) proposal for a USD$120 million package of three new international submarine cable connections for Papua New Guinea.
Called the Pukpuk (a word meaning crocodile) Connectivity Initiative, the project is structured around a multi-route undersea cable solution, designed to bring three additional international cable connections to serve different parts of Papua New Guinea – specifically to improve redundancy and reduce single points of failure.This proposal will apparently come at no direct cost to the Papua New Guinean state.
The advantages the government cites include better reliability – there will be fewer disruptions when faults occur on any single route – along with improved service quality and stronger, more stable connectivity.
Improved affordability over time is another claim for the initiative as well as better access to essential services; the stronger backbone connectivity should be able to support education, health, banking and digital government.
This initiative is also about positioning Papua New Guinea as a credible digital investment destination with stronger redundancy and predictable wholesale capacity, notably by boosting a data centre economy, all of which would also create new employment opportunities.
The country’s Department of Information and Communications Technology (DICT) will work closely with AIFFP and national stakeholders to undertake the preparatory phase, including preliminary technical and economic assessments, identification of suitable cable landing sites, and coordination with central agencies, regulators, and prospective private sector participants. There will also be a focus on strengthened planning for security, resilience and operational continuity, consistent with national obligations and treaty-aligned commitments.
Related to this will be comprehensive consultation with the telecommunications industry and private sector on how best these new assets should be structured and managed – consistent with competition principles that support open and fair wholesale access; strong reliability and resiliency standards; long-term affordability for consumers and businesses; and investment certainty for future expansion.
A press conference has been promised for the last week of February to outline the implementation roadmap.
Although this is not directly referenced by the government announcement, the origin of the initiative appears to lie in a mutual defence agreement between Papua New Guinea and Australia, something we reported in December last year.