Mobile operator, Digicel, has launched its services in the New Ireland province in Papua New Guinea this week.

As reported by The National in Papua New Guinea, the fast-expanding mobile operator's engineers worked over the past weeks installing the microwave link on Duke of York Island, linking New Ireland to East Britain, enabling mobile services for the first time ever for the people of New Ireland.

Digicel has been making its presence known in the region with the launch of its services in Samoa last year, being granted a license in principle from the government of Fiji and an experimental license in the Solomon Islands.

Its launch in July this year ended a fifty-year monopoly in the telecommunications market in PNG.