PNG is by far the largest country considered part of the Pacific Islands. While most of its 7 million residents live on the main island of New Guinea, many are spread over around 600 smaller islands. Its difficult terrain and low level of urbanisation has led to fixed line penetration of only around 150,000 residences, and fewer than three million cellular subscribers. Few of those cellular subscribers have handsets capable of browsing the Internet, and in all only 6.5% of the population has Internet access.

The majority of Internet subscribers in PNG use fixed line services from incumbent Telikom PNG or value added reseller Datec, both of whom pass their traffic to Australia via the APNG cable - a repurposed segment of the PacRim West cable. These subscribers and the cable landing station reside in Port Moresby. To the north terrain has made fibre optic connections impossible, and only microwave links are in place. Digicel PNG carries the bulk of mobile traffic and around 20% of all Internet traffic through a combination of submarine cable access at Kelanoa and O3b satellite.

In April 2016 Telikom PNG announced their government will be supporting a new submarine cable from Port Moresby to Sydney. Given a shared path with a proposed cable from Honiara, Solomon Islands to Sydney, these projects might be combined for cost savings.