Transcript
Last week the contractor landed the cable at Arawa in Bougainville, the last of fifteen landing stations across the country.
Starting from Jayapura in Papua province of neighbouring Indonesia, the cable has landed at stations along PNG's north coast before linking up with towns in the Islands region.
State Enterprises Minister Sasindran Muthuvel says commercialising the asset is the big challenge now.
"Government has invested like 270-million dollars, which is like almost a billion kina. It's huge money to invest. And we want to make sure that asset, whichever time it has been initiated since 2015, becomes commercialised. Of course, if it is used correctly then definitely we should be able to monetise it."
But what rates will Papua New Guineans be charged to use the internet via this cable?
It's a country where people often face exorbitant costs for internet usage, mainly through their phones.
The minister says while Dataco manages the wholesale price, the price at which people buy their data is purely up to retailers.
With the state having borrowed heavily, the viability of the project is far from certain.
"It's not going to be easy for Dataco, as an organisation, it's not going to be that easy to say that they will be able to service the loan and all those things, which I have my own doubts. We definitely need for the national government to take it as one of the national infrastructure, rather than looking at commercial point of view."
The next phase will be to link the cable with the provincial network into PNG's Highlands.
But the project has wracked up hefty cost overruns, partly through disruptions such as damage from an earthquake in Morobe province last year.
Mr Muthuvel is weary about PNG being left to foot the entire bill after investing so much.
"And we want to see... how to repay the loan. The repay will cost maybe, I'm just saying approximately maybe 5000 million dollars or even more. Who will inherit that cost and how do we negotiate with that contractor to ensure that the costs are not passed on to us, and all those kind of challenges."
The minister says the government is still waiting on a report by the Australian government about the overall cost of the project, including the damages from the quake.
