PNG DataCo Chief Executive on NTN, Oracle and the possibilities of AI [video]

Connectivity has driven down the price and led to a much more resilient backbone network for the country.

Since coming online in 2019/20, the Coral Sea Cable has been transformative for Papua New Guinea’s connectivity. Our most significant international investment, it connected directly to the capital and business hub, Port Moresby, unlocking a major boost in internet capacity.

This surge in volume drove a rapid increase in national internet uptake and forced a reduction in consumer prices. The cable primarily serves the major telecom companies – Digicel, Vodafone, Telikom – which consume about 70 per cent of the bandwidth, with the remainder distributed to ISPs [internet service providers] and corporate entities.

We invested a lot initially in terrestrial cables too. As we connected the population, we realised that connectivity was needed in even more remote locations. Hence, we extended connectivity further, into the districts. Today, there is fibre connectivity in all the provinces.

Enhanced internet penetration is estimated to have contributed close to 1 per cent to the country’s GDP growth.

“We already know the advantage of AI… We want to create an environment to make that possible.”

Over the next one to two years, our plan for the NTN focuses on enhancing resilience and expanding reach.

Given PNG’s vulnerability to disasters, we are building redundancy into our submarine cable systems and creating terrestrial loop networks, especially in the economically-critical Highlands region.

A key pillar is partnering with Low Earth Orbit satellite providers like Oneworld, Starlink and others. This will deliver vital redundancy and connect the remote 70 to 80 per cent of the population beyond fibre’s reach.

Concurrently, in urban centres, we will deploy advanced fixed broadband technologies to connect buildings and residents, complementing the existing 4G mobile networks. This dual strategy ensures both reliable core infrastructure and expanded national coverage.

Apart from connectivity, we are looking at cloud computing and data centres. We want to provide the latest in the market for our consumers.

We plan to build another data centre at Kumul Petroleum’s special economic zone [SEZ] in Caution Bay. We’re looking at an SEZ zone in Lae to maintain the data centres because technology is evolving very fast. We’re also looking at the Islands and Highlands regions for data centres.

We were approached by Oracle, who wanted a partner in PNG. Oracle provides all the infrastructure – software and hardware – which it manages under the DataCo logo. Oracle has approval to localise campaigns for PNG, making sure everything is up to date for our [local] context.

Our collaboration with Oracle is prominent in education, where we jointly developed a learning management system with Samsung devices. We manage the content and platform for students and lecturers while connecting universities with necessary infrastructure.

Oracle are spending, but we see [this partnership] as a foreign direct investment. The load that we consume will be the one that will repay the investment in the country.

We also see Oracle assisting us with digitalisation plans being developed by other SOEs [state-owned enterprises] owned by our parent company, Kumul Consolidated Holdings. We are about to put pen to paper for five SOEs to initiate the project.

I think digitalisation is something most SOEs should be focusing on. It’s the way forward for SOEs, as our minister has confirmed.

We only started with AI early in 2025, but I feel like I’ve been using it for years. It’s very intuitive. I’m encouraging our staff to use it as a tool. Now we’re looking at setting policies for AI usage for all of our 140 employees, enabling them to work with AI gadgets on our network. We’re trying to use technology to enable us to perform better.

Traditional ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] software is automated in a way, but it doesn’t have those additional features that make you more efficient, [whereas] AI features are really amazing. You don’t need to have an assistant anymore, that cuts down on labour numbers. It also can cut down human errors and flaws.

I think latency will be a key factor in supporting technologies like AI.

We already know the advantage of AI. And most of our government have set targets to utilise technology to help growth and development.

We want to create an environment to make that possible.