Dear Editor

It is heartening to read the government's commitment to deregularize the Solomon Islands' telecommunication market. It has no alternative but to take this direction.

In dealing with deregularising the telecommunication market, the Solomon Islands government could learn from how other Pacific countries handled it. Fiji for example put out its second license for competitive bidding. Digicel won after forking out a cool $10 million for the right to operate in Fiji. It will be a win win situation if the Solomon Islands government puts out the second license to operate in its tecommunication market for competitive bidding.

Let us hope that Our Telecom keeps on operating when the new telecommunication company comes into the country. In economics, if only one company is allowed to operate in an economy, (regardless of what name it goes by) it is called a monopoly and whether Solomon Islanders like it or not, it will behave as a monopoly when and if it wishes. If Our Telecom dies a natural death due to the competition provided by the second company, then the government must ensure that another telecommunication company is allowed to operate in the country.