[Linganth] Robert Foster on mobile phones in PNG

[Ilana Gershon]

Dear Colleagues,
Today on the blog, Robert Foster discusses his new book, *Uneven
Connections: A Partial History of Mobile Phones in Papua New Guinea *with
Ira Bashkow.

campanthropology.org

Best,
Ilana
For free PDF
https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/series/pacific/uneven-connections

Press blurb: In the first years of the 21st century, economic
liberalisation began to transform telecommunications services throughout
the Pacific Islands. Government regulators, corporate executives and
everyday consumers hopefully imagined that opening mobile phone markets to
competition would result in greater access, lower costs and
accelerated development.

*Uneven Connections* examines the ways in which liberalisation took hold in
Papua New Guinea (PNG) when a unit of the Caribbean-based mobile network
operator Digicel Group Ltd. seized the opportunity to compete with the
state-sponsored incumbent. The book highlights how mobile phones entered
the lives of urban and rural Papua New Guineans after Digicel’s arrival in
2007. In so doing, it describes a moral economy in which companies,
consumers and state agents continually negotiate who owes what to whom. In
what ways have these various actors invented and negotiated new forms of
both freedom and constraint?

*Uneven Connections* advances understanding of how a so-called digital
revolution in PNG unfolded, resulting in outcomes that often confounded the
expectations of policy makers and ordinary citizens alike. It assesses the
extent to which some of the promises of this revolution have been redeemed
and identifies the challenges faced by companies, consumers and state
agents in establishing and experiencing novel forms of uneven connectivity.
The book provides a short and selective history of mobile phones in PNG,
ending with the sale of Digicel’s Pacific operations to the Australian
company Telstra in 2022.
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