Telekom PNG pioneers hybrid system
p. 55 · Read in the full issue
By John Samar
PAPUA New Guinea, Just below the equator, covers an area 0f463,000 square kilometres. It is made up of the main island of New Guinea, and 600 small islands, and is bigger than Japan and the United Kingdom. It has a population of 3,950,000 people. Eighty per cent of them live in the rural areas, while 20 per cent live in urban centres. The current rate of population growth is 2.5 per cent.
Port Moresby, the capital, has a popu lation of 188,090 people. There are 20 provinces in the country.
Papua New Guinea has difficult ter rain consisting of high mountains and vast swampy plains. About 85 per cent of the mainland is covered by mountain ranges which are generally over 3000 metres and have many peaks over 4000 metres.
Independent since 1975, Papua New Guinea is a democratic country with its members elected to parliament for a term of five years. With vast mineral, oil and tas resources, Papua New Guinea is the .Idorado of the South Pacific as it is among the top six gold producing countries in the world.
Although a young country, Papua New Guinea has made rapid progress from the stone age to the space age in its acquisition of state of the art telecom munications technology. The telecom
division of the Post and Telecommunica tions Corporation with a staff of 1594 operate, and maintain one of the world’s best and most modern telecommunica tions systems consisting of an efficient network of more than 70 microwave repeater stations, linking up with 44 telephone exchanges in 36 centres serving more than 39,000 subscribers throughout Papua New Guinea.
A domestic satellite network comprises 13 centres throughout Papua New is being implemented to complement the terrestrial trunk network. This should be fully operational by the end of 1993.
The domestic hub earth station is located in Port Moresby and is equipped with state of the art satellite receiving and transmission facilities. For interna tional telecommunications, an 18-metre intelsat standard ‘A’ satellite earth sta tion in Port Moresby fully manned by national engineers and technicians, pro vided IDD connections to the Pacific rim and south-east Asian countries.
The Port Moresby earth station oper ates to the Pacific Ocean region intelsat satellite in orbital location, 174 degrees fast longitudinal the major destinations of traffic streams are Australia, New Zealand, USA, Singapore and United Kingdom while the growth streams are mainly in south east Asia.
A submarine cable system between Port Moresby and Cairns, known as
Australia-PNG cable (A-PNG) is also used as a gateway transmission facility to complement the intelsat satellite system.
Papua New Guinea is proud to be one of the countries at the forefront in using modern telecommunications technology to unite the world into a global village. p N u • i leading the South Pacific • u of hvbr d now pioneering ttie use ol Hybrid power systems to operate its remote microwaye r3.dio repeater stations. The hybrid power system was designed after years of research in the use of various forms o£ alternative energy to operate remote microwave repeater stations. A hybrid power system uses a combination of diesel fuel and solar energy to operate the repeater stations. At present two repeater stations Mt. Mission and Mt. Oomsis in the Morobe province are operating on hybrid power system, while, three new hybrid power units are being installed at Mt Kerewa, Mt Lalibu, and Ka Peak in
the southern highlands province,
Because of PNG Telekom’s expertise in hybrid power systems, three of its national engineers, Jimmy Wayongi, Aloisius Paisawa, and Patrick Aumanu spent two weeks in Vanuatu with Telecom Vanuatu .(TVLy and trained 16 of their technicians in the installation, operation and maintenance of hybrid power systems.
Other countries suchas the Gambia in West Africa, Sri Lanka and Niue have requested for similar training in the operation of hybrid power sytems. □