Providing a conducive environment where the tech industry will thrive is key to ensuring faster connectivity which is affordable, reliable and fair for all stakeholders, said Fijian Competition and Consumer Commission chief executive officer Senikavika Jiuta.
As head of Fiji’s competition regulator that also regulates interconnection services between telecom operators and wholesale prices of data services, Ms Jiuta said she had adopted the perspective of a regulator during the two-day Pacific Fiber Conference and Training, which opened in Nadi on Wednesday this week.
This, in terms of listening with the intention to an improve service, provide quality standards and better infrastructure, which in turn means fewer complaints.
“For a regulator, we need to know, apart from the tech side of things, the deployments, the rollout.
“Regulators can then set clear enforceable standards for speed and latency,” she said.
Ms Juita said fibre-based networks were more resilient and have higher capacity than copper or older wireless systems.
“We heard that from them yesterday. I mean the experts were talking about the new thing and it’s interesting for a regulator because now we know the specifics of things.
“It’s very technical, but at the same time when we regulate, we have to ensure that we know what we’re regulating, that when they’re making submissions, we’re just saying yes but we don’t know what happens at the back end.”
Ms Jiuta said she enjoyed the first day of the conference, in particular, hearing from representatives of Google and Pacific counterparts in Telstra.
“They really gave some insights into the technical perspective and also, this is also an opportunity to push for minimum service benchmarks.
“We had the gentleman from the Philippines who talked about cybersecurity and latency and then how to improve the service.
“So, we need to ensure that when they’re talking about all these technical things, we know about it.”
Ms Jiuta said more affordable access through competition was discussed on Wednesday.
“The conference actually provides a chance to encourage open access network models or shared infrastructure.
“So reducing costs for smaller ISPs and driving price competition for end users.”
Ms Jiuta said the conference was also an opportunity for public-private partnerships.