Education Minister, Mathew Wale, has described the exclusive license granted to Our Telekom to operate as a monopoly in the country's telecommunication industry as "an obstacle to progress in information and communications technology and services in Solomon Islands."
Contributing to the debate on the Telecommunications Bill 2009, Mr. Wale said that the exclusive license was "immoral and that the monopoly could not be effectively regulated.""We have seen that monopolies are very insensitive to consumer concerns and seemed to feel no pressure to changes behavior. We have also seen Sir that monopoly has been as an obstacle to new, more efficient and reliable technologies in the telecommunication sector," said Mr. Wale.
"As a monopoly they were never really interested in expanding services to remote and rural areas and would never respond to any, whether from the market or otherwise pressure to do so as a result."