Top up online with Digicel Online Top Up!

I discovered Digicel PNG's online top up service on mother's day;) Being unable to send a mother's day gift to my mother on time, I sent her credit (to call me). Selflessness at its worst.

Digicel's online top up service is hosted by ezetop, an online and international mobile top-up provider. However, I've noticed that ezetop also its members to top-up directly from their website - with a number of obvious differences between the two services.

Unlike Digicel's online top up where the amount the person receiving the credit is receiving is automatically calculated, you have to click in order to calculate when you use ezetop.

In addition, unlike digicel's online top up, you can send a message for AUD0.33 (like I did).

Ezetop top-up amounts are:

• AUD$4.73 (PNGK10.97);



• AUD$9.76 (PNGK21.95);



• AUD$18.93 (PNGK43.90); and
  


• AUD$28.39 (PNGK65.85)

Notably, the exchange rates are not consistent with each top up amount today (May 30, 2011). With the rates for the $4.73 and $28.39 being the only consistent calculated at 2.319 (AUD1=PNGK2.319).

In comparison, Digicel PNG's online top up amounts are (and will get you):

• AUD$6.58 (PNGK15.00);



• AUD$13.16 (PNGK30.00);



• AUD$19.75 (PNGK45.00);and



• AUD$26.33 (PNGK60.00).
  

All calculatedd exchange rates for digicel online top for today (May 30, 2011) are consistent at 2.28 (AUD1=PNGK2.28).

ANZ's rates for today (May 30, 2011) are 2.3089 according to ANZ's online currency exchange calculator.

Ezetop have an app on the Apple Store, whereas Digicel don't. Which is why I am on a mission to keep asking questions as to why not.

Overall, in terms of price, Digicel Online Top Up is cheaper than ezetop.

Digicel loses points for not having an app, which may drive (as it almost did me before writing this post and working the pros and cons of each service provider) customers to the ezetop app due to its ease of use and accessibility.

Although ezetop does have an app, what's worse is that you need to sign up to be a member of ezetop - registering cannot be done on the app, you need to do so on a PC, or through a web browser of choice on your mobile phone. In addition, once you sign up on your PC, have downloaded the ezetop app for free on the Apple Store, and are a first time user, an error message appears stating that the ezetop mobile website requires you to have completed a transaction and stored your credit card on the desktop version of ezetop.com. I understand the need for the credit card details, however why complete a transaction first! I guess, as a first-time user of the app, I am all but absolutely discouraged.

For those who don't mind going to Digicel PNG's website, searching the services tab, scrolling down and clicking the Online Top Up option (or alternatively, clicking the banner that appears on the home page).

There are numerous ways to use Digicel's online top up service, personally as an overseas student (I speak to my mum mostly around 3 times a day) and a vodafone AU user, I refuse to pay $6.10 a minute. By sending my mother credit, it's hell cheaper given Digicel's PNGK.049 from 8pm to 8am everyday (no call connection fee).

So compared to $6.10 per minute (PNGK14.08) (as per vodafone au, excluding call connection fee), it only costs only 49 toea!

If, you're not an existing customer of Digicel's Online Top-Up Service, sign up online for Digicel's Online Top-Up Service here.

The Offline Social Network - The Hungry Beast

Imagine if Facebook was an actual person. Like alive. This is what a conversation with 'Facebook' would be like.

This is hilarious.

Watch it!

Aural pleasures: May 2011

Im sitting in the State Library in Brisbane and love how there are many other people with Mac's as well because they have all kindly shared their iTunes music with me.

So I have found yet another innovative source of inspiration for this post.

I have since discovered a few new songs I have never heard before (some from familiar artists such as Amy Winehouse and Habib Koite (that African sounding artist whose great music comes preloaded with any Microsoft Windows Media Player).

Check some of this music out - the links take you to youtube videos.

1. High Life - Daft Punk
2. He Can Only Hold Her - Amy Winehouse
3. Takamba - Habib Koite and Barnada-Baro
4. Piramidub - Zeb
5. Menino - Assad Brothers with Yo-Yo Ma
6. Chris Chana - Wagon Christ
7. Carnt sleep - Saint Etienne
8. Such great heights - The Postal Service
9. Menoon Yar Manawan - Nusrat Fatah Ali Khan
10. Until the end of time - Norah Jones
11. Drain you - Nirvana
12. Muzsikas - The Prisoners Song
13. The Departure - Earth, Wind and Fire
14. Pink on White Walls - Paul Weller
15. Bail Me Out - Pete Murray - i lie, I have this album but love this song
16. Freedom - Pete Murray
17. Please - Pete Murray
18. My time - Pete Murray
19. Tonic - Pete Murray
20. Ten Ft. Tall - Pete Murray

Have fun kids:)

Jokes from an iconic Papua New Guinean pioneer: Henry Kila

Was just checking out Nancy Sullivan's blog and came across a post on a fellow Yule Islander, Henry Kila who passed away early last year. He was buried on Yule Island.

He was known for being a witty one. Here are a few jokes that Nancy shares:

I remember sitting in the back of the DWU auditorium with him and Mel Togolo for one of the Australian-PNG Business council sessions this year, all of us giggling too much for our own good. Still, I couldn't move away, Henry was being too funny. When a member of the Education Department took the stage I gasped in admiration of his big soft afro. "Where's he from Henry?""

"1972".

Nancy isn't sure but believes this is the last joke she heard him tell:

Mugabe, Somare and Mandela are all tumbling to the ground after a mid-air collision. Everyone takes out their cel phone. Mandela starts dialing up St Peter to be cleared through the Pearly Gates. But the phone keeps ringing and ringing off the hook. Mugabe tries now, but he only gets a busy signal. So Somare dials a number and gets through right away. "How'd you do that? they ask. "Hey, for me," Somare says, "its only a local call.""

R.I.P.

The PNG Gov's history with price controls

Although a few of you may find certain (if not in its entirety) the notion of privatising state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in Papua New Guinea in particular, then I think this paper by Timothy Curton of Australia National University (ANU) called "Privatisation Policy in Papua New Guinea" will demonstrate why the Mekere Government was adamant on a privatision policy during his term (1999-2002). However, this process was stalled when Somare came into power immediately after.

Commercial Statutory Authorities (CSAs) such as Elcom (Now PNG POWER), Air Niugini and Harbours Board throughout the lifetimes have been subject to an over-regulated market mechanism by the State.

Have a look at p.6:

The cabinet’s decision (National Executive Council 163/1983, 1–5) defining
the government’s future relations with the CSAs also laid down that they
should only undertake new investments if they earned at least the rate of return to be laid down from time to time by the minister for Finance in the
annual budget, and that if a CSA wished to undertake a non-commercial
investment for ‘social/political reasons’, it should seek a subsidy through the budget to cover any losses incurred by the investment. The minimum rate of return was announced only once in a budget, and that budget was rejected (in 1985), but the minister for Finance had in 1984 advised each CSA that an ‘appropriate’ rate of return would be in the range of 16–22 per cent already permitted to the private sector on price-controlled items (Whitworth 1993, 25). These prescribed rates of return were rarely achieved by any of the
CSAs. The average return on investment (ROI) of all four CSAs between 1985
and 1989 varied between a low of 11.1 per cent in 1985 and a high of 13.1
per cent in 1986 (World Bank 1992, 178). Those were the good years: from
1994 onwards Elcom’s operating profits were usually less than its interest
payments (partly because price controls prevented tariff increases to cover
higher costs of imported fuel after the devaluation of the kina in 1994) and
its ROI fell below 5 per cent, while the PTC’s fell to 4 per cent in 1995,
and Air Niugini incurred only losses after 1994 (World Bank 1999, 148–149).

So only if CSA's made a return of between 16-22% percent (of which none of them even achieved together), then they would be able to make new investments!

Curtin continues on p.7:


The NEC decision had directed the CSAs to prepare annual rolling forward five-year capital investment programs for approval by cabinet, and this was complied with until they were corporatized in the late 1990s. The decision further stated that legislation would be drafted enabling the CSAs to vary their prices and charges to the level needed to achieve the required rates of return, but subject to the ‘price justification’ procedures laid down in the Prices Regulation Act. The force of the cabinet’s decisions on pricing and investments was considerably weakened by this failure to grasp the nettle of freeing the CSAs from the government’s pricecontrols. As the years went by, the CSAs found it more and more difficult to gain timely
approval for price increases from the secretary of the Finance or Treasury Department, in his role as price controller, and this largely explains the CSAs’ worsening profits performance noted above. But even in the good years their overall gross margin (i.e. total revenue less
operating costs as a ratio of total revenue) was less than 20 per cent, whereas the private sector would aim for 40 per cent; and this shortfall reflected operating inefficiencies, inadequate sales relative to their large capital investments, and over-staffing.

p.8 continues:


It is evident that the response of the government in 1983 to the growing
difficulties of the CSAs in the 1970s and early 1980s was not to contemplate
privatization, which was rarely mentioned as a possibility, except by
Trebilcock(1982, 115), but to accept Floyd’s restructuring proposals by
turning them into quasi-autonomous entities free to behave as if they were private sector firms, subject however to restrictions on price setting and
staff emoluments. The implicit contradiction between Floyd’s commercialization of the CSAs and their continued public ownership was either not noticed or justified on the grounds that given equal commercial efficiency public monopolies would somehow be
more benevolent than private monopolies.

Does this sound familiar (Curtin,p.8):

Both the CSAs’ autonomy and their ability to operate as if they were privately owned began to be eroded in the 1990s, for increasingly their boards and top management became the creatures
of the current minister, and if he was removed or transferred to a new ministry,
the new incumbent soon acted to replace both board and top management (Millett 1993, 27).

Thoughts?