This article reports on ongoing monitoring of mobile internet prices in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and shows that prices remained stable throughout 2025. This policy-relevant research is taking place amid significant communication infrastructure developments.
In December 2025, PNG’s acting communication minister announced an early Christmas gift for the country: three new undersea cables to be delivered not by Santa’s sleigh but as part of the Pukpuk Connectivity Initiative, an undertaking that sits within the broader bilateral context of the Pukpuk Treaty with Australia.
PNG already has three cables enabling internet connectivity: the Pipe Pacific Cable 1 from Guam, which landed in Madang in 2009; the Pukpuk1 cable from Jayapura, Indonesia, which connected Vanimo in 2020; and the Coral Sea Cable from Sydney to Port Moresby, which was officially launched in December 2019.
The Coral Sea Cable launch provided the initial impetus for our research into the pricing of mobile internet services for consumers in PNG. The research commenced in the first week of 2020 (see data note 1 below for an explanation of the weekly data collection method). This blog reports on mobile internet prices during the 2025 calendar year (see data note 2 below for exact reporting dates).
Digicel’s internet prices were monitored every Monday in 2025. Prices fluctuated early in the year, remained constant for several months and then changed slightly again in mid-2025. Figure 1 shows the mobile internet prices offered by Digicel during 2025.
Figure 1: One-day, three-day, seven-day and 30-day plans offered by Digicel in 2025 (toea per megabyte)
Source: Research team.
Digicel’s data bundle prices were unstable and unpredictable throughout the year. With strong network coverage and a widespread customer base, Digicel is a top player in the industry. However, users have no way of predicting when Digicel will change its prices or whether the service will remain affordable when it does. Keeping track of these fluctuations is vital, as it enables further discussion and improvement in the industry.
By contrast, there were no changes in Telikom’s data bundle prices throughout 2025. The one-day, three-day, seven-day and 30-day bundles all remained the same. While this stability is helpful for customers planning expenditure, it also means there were no improvements in affordability during the year. (Temporary promotions could have been offered in 2025 on days of the week other than Monday, thus eluding our data collection.)
Vodafone PNG also maintained consistent pricing for its one-day, three-day, seven-day and 30-day data bundles from January to December 2025, with no adjustments recorded during this interval. In January 2026, the company expanded its product portfolio by introducing a series of mid-range data bundles priced at K10 for 6GB (valid for five days), K20 for 12GB (valid for 10 days) and K25 for 15GB (valid for 14 days).
The introduction of the mid-range bundles coincided with the discontinuation of Vodafone’s previously popular “double data” promotion, which had offered customers twice the purchased data from Thursday to Saturday each week. This promotion formally ended on 31 December 2025, a change that prompted numerous customer queries and complaints on social media, including comments posted to the company’s official Facebook page. Vodafone retained its overnight promotion of 1GB for K1 (running from 10pm to 6am daily) and its “supa Sunday” promotion, which provides 2GB of data for K2 for use by midnight on Sunday. The in-demand “double data” promotion was re-introduced in mid-April 2026.
In summary, mobile internet prices generally remained stable in PNG during 2025, although Digicel customers experienced fluctuations and unpredictability. Digicel’s pricing shifts affect the national picture, given the company’s size as a market actor. In some populated parts of PNG, Digicel is the only network available, leaving customers in such locations with limited choice.
While there is evidence that prices declined in 2019 and again when Vodafone entered the market, there were no notable changes in 2025. Digicel prices fluctuated but the other two providers kept their data bundle prices steady. The continued stability across Telikom and Vodafone suggests that competitive pressure did not intensify in 2025, and may indicate that the PNG mobile data market has entered a stabilisation phase following the disruption caused by Vodafone’s entry in 2022.
Starlink’s satellite internet service has now been issued a licence to operate in PNG. A court judgement handed down on 24 April 2026 at the PNG National Court cleared the way for the licensing process to progress. Prior to these developments, the regulator had stated that Starlink’s use in PNG was illegal, while businesses, bureaucrats and prominent citizens called for Starlink access.
In the first quarter of 2026, the regulator in PNG approved trials of OneWeb’s satellite communication services by four companies. Like Starlink, OneWeb operates a constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites. Starlink has far more satellites in orbit than any other company and offers direct-to-consumer services, whereas OneWeb is concentrated on offering services to businesses and telecommunication providers.
Our team will continue to monitor prices. If the three new undersea cables go ahead, we will attempt to ascertain whether they have any impact on retail internet pricing. We will also observe developments regarding satellite communications and their possible effects on prices.
The authors gratefully acknowledge the ongoing contributions of Moses Sakai to the project.
Data note 1: Between 2020 and 2022, mobile internet prices were monitored for Digicel, Telikom and bmobile as separate mobile network operators (MNOs) in PNG. However, Telikom and bmobile were treated as a single retail entity (as PNG Telikom Ltd) in the data collection effort following their merger in 2021. Vodafone entered the PNG telecommunication market in mid-2022. Although the three MNOs (Digicel, Telikom and Vodafone) provide a range of internet packages for various periods of time, this research has focused on monitoring the data bundles offered by the three MNOs for 1, 3, 7 and 30 days. The data collection does not cover the internet prices offered through the three MNOs’ “combo” products. Data entry for each of the three MNOs’ products is done every Monday, and prices are obtained by typing the code “*777#” on our mobile devices. While Telikom and Vodafone only use “*777#”, Digicel users type “*777#” for internet bundles and “*675#” for other Digicel products. All previous updates are available here.
Data note 2: The last update reported on data up to and including Monday 11 November 2024. This update includes data from Monday 18 November 2024 to Monday 29 December 2025 inclusive.
