Pacific Series. Canberra: Australian National University Press, 2024. US$36.00, paper; free ebook. ISBN 9781760466251.
The spread of new information and communications technologies in the Global South has been the joint product of technical innovation and trade liberalization. This is especially true in countries like Papua New Guinea, where an entrenched digital divide was the product of a state-operated telecommunications system (Telikom) whose reach was largely confined to an urban elite. This changed with the arrival of an offshore competitor, Digicel, in 2007. Foster examines Digicel’s entry against the backdrop of EU and WTO influences that helped overcome Telikom’s opposition. Digicel rapidly embarked on a program of cell tower construction that left Telikom in the dust: in less than a decade Digicel had built an effective monopoly of coverage in rural and urban PNG. Mobile phones had become a part of everyday life in even the poorest and remotest parts of the country.
Anthropologists were not slow in taking note, and there is already a respectable ethnographic literature on mobile phone use in PNG. Foster, however, broadens the scope of the story in two important ways. Using a moral economy perspective, he examines the relations between users, corporations, and the state in terms of what each owes to or claims from the others. He then tracks the history of these relations from Digicel’s entry into the PNG market through to its acquisition by Telstra in 2022.
The first part of the book details political maneuvering as divided state agencies alternately frustrated or encouraged opening the mobile phone market. Foster also outlines Digicel’s infrastructural challenges in building a network of phone towers in daunting landscapes with weak transportation links. These technical issues were accompanied by unanticipated problems in leasing tower sites from reluctant landowners, as well as in ensuring power supply and tower maintenance. A further issue beyond PNG’s borders was linking the network to transnational gateways—a problem that only eased when satellite connections became available as alternatives to expensive undersea cable systems. Beyond these practical difficulties, Digicel’s success depended on the development of a larger user base, a process Foster illustrates with a close analysis of Digicel’s advertising and cultivation of positive images by sponsoring sporting events, festivals, and good works.
The middle chapters examine Digicel’s customer relations in detail. One of Digicel’s attempts to increase profits was to offer time-limited discounts to boost usage. Users developed innovative strategies of their own in response, such as ringing a specified number of times before hanging up—signalling (without charge) that one wanted a call from the recipient. Selling airtime depended on a widespread but informal network of vendors who sold “flex cards” along with handsets and SIM cards at markets and roadsides across the country. This changed with the arrival of smart phones and broadband access from 2011 on. Along with the ability to blog, post in social media, or view and share videos, it now became easy for customers to manage or transfer airtime online with their phones—with street vendors losing out.
The shift to data also required tower upgrades, and these were often regarded as too costly to justify in areas with few users. The result was that improved technology created greater inclusion for some while excluding others, producing a new digital divide between those at the end of the line (Tokpisin las ples) and the rest.
The final third of the book turns to attempts to grapple with disruptions attending widespread mobile phone use. One concern was the potential of the phone’s communicative privacy to foster clandestine or illicit relationships, sometimes with unidentified “phone friends” dialled at random. Reported reactions ranged from marital disruption to heightened spousal surveillance or avoiding phone use altogether to forestall suspicion. Such concerns as well as widespread use of pen names in social media posts, scams, and threats fed calls for compulsory SIM card registration. Such registration was also deemed advantageous for the state, since a national identity database could, in principle, facilitate better service delivery to citizens. Although a framework for registration was adopted in 2016, it proved expensive to implement and remains incomplete to this day. The state’s interest in mobile phones, however, took another direction with the introduction of a cybercrime code barring the use of ICT services for illegal or “disruptive” purposes—widely denounced as an attempt to censor public criticism of the government. This potential has, however, failed to materialize thus far.
In his penultimate chapter Foster turns to Digicel’s claims to corporate social responsibility by way of its foundation work in supporting broadly laudatory social aims. Reprising his earlier discussion of the Digicel Foundation, Foster casts a skeptical eye on such projects, examples of which are Digicel’s partnership in sharing construction costs for tower upgrades or classroom building in remote areas. Here he is at pains to say his criticism is aimed at the assumption of quasi-state functions by corporate actors, who simultaneously profit from public goodwill. He follows this with a look at claims for social benefits resulting from improved network coverage, ranging from mobile banking to facilitating disaster assistance or ensuring reliable information during the COVID crisis. While such benefits seem to make good on the idea of extending “infrastructural citizenship,” Foster argues that such claims point towards corporate participation in governance without answerability—a world in which connections are not merely uneven, but also unequal in a most powerful way.
As most anthropologists come to realize, ethnography is sooner or later destined to become history. Foster’s account follows PNG’s Digicel story through successive twists and turns as relations between actors range between a dance and a wrestling match, without quite coming to rest. We can be sure that there will be further uneven connections in PNG, and that Foster’s chronicle will provide a baseline for tracking them.
Dan Jorgensen
Western University, London