Digicel announces rate cuts

Caption:   Mr Mangos (left) and a model showing the 59t per minute plan


By MATTHEW VARI

Wednesday, August 14, 2013 (Midweek Chronicle, PNG)



The nation’s leading communications company, Digicel PNG announced reductions on both its call and text rates - with a reduction of 40 per cent on call, and 20 per cent on text messaging, yesterday at the Lamana Hotel’s Athenian Conference Room in Port Moresby.

The Everyday Talker plan on voice calls decreases the peak rate has from 99t per minute, to 59t, while the text messaging rate has dropped from 25t per message to 20t.

In order to use the voice plan, Digicel Prepay customers, are to simply text “TALK” to 1660, with no charge- the plan is valid 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The 59t per minute voice plan applies to all Digicel customers only for the first three minute and the next 17 minutes are free, however, any calls to other networks will be charged at 82t per minute for the first three minute.

Digicel CEO, John Mangos, said that Digicel was the best value in the market, and that they would keep working to improve all aspects of their service including their rates.

“We’ve had feedback from our customers regarding rates on our voice calls, so what we’ve done is taken 40% off our rates, which gives people a lot more off their voice calls during the day.”

“The SMS rate has dropped from 25t down to 20t and when you send three, there are free SMSs after that,” he said.

He said that they would continue to innovate in the marketplace- inline with their promise when they first launched, which was affordability and accessibility, something that they have continued since.

“Since we launched this is the first change in our call rate plan, where we’ve actually dropped our peak rate.”

“We’ve done lots of promotions around it, but this is actually the first time ever launched an Opt in rate plan like this,” he added.

Mr Mangos hailed Papua New Guinea as one of the fastest growing place in the world to have embraced mobile communications, which has been incredibly quick.

“We launched internet data two years after we launched, and now our whole focus is on rolling out data.”

“A lot of people here have had their first internet experience through their phones, and not actually through PCs (personal computers),” Mr Mangos explained.

The progress of how fast PNG is going in mobile communication with Digicel is such that they now have 80% population coverage, and 30% geographic coverage, and intend to keep increasing that.

Digicel PNG spends K200 million kina on their network roll out program each year just to keep up with demand and affordability of their customers.