Firm marks 12 years of service
DIGICEL Fiji’s entry 12 years ago into the country was possible through the liberalisation of the economy as a way of getting new entrants into the telecommunications market, says Minister for Economy, Civil Service and Communications, Aiyaz Sayed- Khaiyum.
Speaking at the 12th year anniversary celebrations for Digicel Fiji yesterday, Mr SayedKhaiyum said competition brought in new ideas and innovation which benefited the people.
“Liberalisation of the economy meant, not only in your traditional areas of the economy, like goods or retail, but also fundamentally in the area of things like telecommunications and a number of other areas,” he said.
“Of course, at that point in time, companies like Vodafone, Cable and Wireless or FINTEL, TFL all had what we call exclusivity.
“And then long-term exclusivity, which meant that other companies could not enter the telecommunications sector.”
He said essentially, customers in Fiji did not have any choice because of the lack of competition.
“In any economy, you need to have competition, you need to have the ability to have businesses to do their ultimate best.
“By having competition, we actually create innovation and you will have creativity, you will think outside the box because you want to be able to compete with other companies.
“Fiji had a small jurisdiction as there were less than one million people compared to countries with a larger population size and more mobile companies to choose from.
“For us one of the greatest challenges, of course, is companies tend to, what we call, cherry pick, that’s why we need to be careful about that as well.
“It is not very cheap, for example, to provide network coverage to some village that may be behind three mountains in a cove.”
He said the Government was working with these organisations to make sure the public was connected.
“Telecommunications internet mobile phone connectivity has been hailed as the greatest equaliser.
“A poor person can access Google, so can a rich person and whilst it may be the greatest equaliser, it becomes the greatest dis-equaliser if you don’t connect some people and others.”
According to Mr Sayed-Khaiyum, those who were connected, would leap ahead while those who weren’t would be left behind.
“This is why it is in our interest to ensure that everybody’s connected.
“This is why it is in our interest to ensure that we’ll not only liberalise the economy by way of getting new entrants into the market but look at some of the fundamental structures,” he said.