Tenuous Connectivity: Time, Citizenship, and Infrastructure in a Papua New Guinea Telecommunications Network

Uneven Connections: A Partial History of the Mobile Phone in Papua New Guinea

“…The initial telecommunications democracy that Digicel established in 2007 in which all citizens were equally served, if they were served at all, by the same 2G towers has yielded to a more hierarchical arrangement in which one's location in town or in the bush effectively determines one's status in the network and perforce the quality of one's 'infrastructural citizenship' (Lemanski 2018;Foster 2023; see Conclusion).…”

“…A message announcing a new tower and welcoming Vodafone's service to villages in the Aroma Coast area south of the national capital was recirculated with a complaint about blackspots in Vodafone's coverage of Port Moresby. Some commenters complained about slow internet speeds or lack of reception in particular locations, and one commenter joked that the Aroma villagers only need the tower for voice calls not data calls, thus deeming obsolete technology appropriate for rural areas (see Foster 2023). These complaints highlight the experience of uneven connections and suggest that infrastructure is indeed an incomplete process, but not quite in the same way that Pradeep Lal, thinking of penetration rates, might have in mind.…”