PNG blueprint proposes $6 cable tariff and DataCo cost inquiry

PNG’s cable is ready. Its price list is under interrogation

Why it matters

An independent telecoms blueprint asks Papua New Guinea to cut the wholesale charge on the Coral Sea Cable and make the regulator inspect the books behind it.

Daniel Kade24 October 2026 at 08:04 UTCReading Time 2 minLast update: 24 October 2026

Le plan de PNG demande qui fixe le prix de la capacité internationale. Illustration éditoriale originale.

Summary

Papua New Guinea’s newly public independent Telecommunications Blueprint recommends bringing DataCo’s Coral Sea Cable wholesale charge down to at most US$6 per Mbps per month.
It would have NICTA obtain DataCo’s underlying costs, set a cost-reflective price and protect access for smaller internet providers. PNG’s government has undertaken to consider the recommendations.

The cable is in the water. At the wholesale counter, the price still decides how much of its capacity operators can buy. In its independent Telecommunications Blueprint, released after this week’s PNG–Australia ministerial forum, the authors urge the Papua New Guinea government and Kumul Consolidated Holdings to instruct state wholesaler DataCo to lower Coral Sea Cable prices immediately to no more than US$6 per Mbps per month. That figure is the report’s proposed starting price and modelling proxy, awaiting a government decision.

The recommendation comes with an audit trail. The Blueprint says regulator NICTA should use its existing information-gathering powers to compel DataCo’s commercial and operating cost data, calculate an efficient cost-recovery price, and revisit DataCo’s volume discounts. It also calls for transparent, nondiscriminatory capacity access for smaller internet service providers. A small ISP needs both the lower unit price and a volume tier it can actually buy.

The authors put a second guardrail on the next cable. Their proposed Pukpuk Digital Connectivity Initiative vehicle would give industry participants majority ownership, leave the PNG government with a non-controlling stake and write cost-recovery pricing into the company’s purpose. That is a governance choice about who can collect the toll when new capacity arrives. The report’s immediate priority, though, is the existing Coral Sea Cable invoice.

The official ministerial communiqué records that PNG undertook to consider adoption of the Blueprint’s recommendations. It welcomed the report’s publication; it did not announce the proposed DataCo tariff. The report itself assigns the price instruction and initial governance decisions to its October–December 2026 horizon. For operators, the sequence will be visible in a government direction, a NICTA cost request and a revised wholesale offer.

DFAT’s publication page dates the report’s delivery to both governments to 1 October.