Papua New Guinea is by far the largest country considered part of the Pacific Islands. While most of its 7.6 million residents live on the main island of New Guinea, many are spread over around 600 smaller islands. Difficult terrain and low levels of urbanisation have led to fixed line penetration of only around 150,000 residences. Mobile coverage reaches around 67% of the population, and 3g services reach around 41%, but only 33% of the population has mobile phones. Around a million mobile subscribers have access to the Internet, with around 600,000 of them using smartphones.

Digicel is PNG's dominant carrier, with around 92% of all mobile subscribers. From the perspective of Internet traffic served though, In 2019 they had only around 60% market share. Other providers including Telikom PNG, Datec, Speedcast, bMobile, and a host of smaller ISPs serve the balance.

A reorganisation of the incumbent telecommunications provider Telikom PNG in 2018 led to the formation of a wholesale only provider, PNG Dataco. They are the sole agent for providing international submarine capacity.

PNG is serviced by four fibre optic cables - three of them modern. Their first connection was the APNG2 cable, a repurposed section of PACRIM West that carries around 1.2 Gbps of voice and low-speed data traffic from Sydney to Port Moresby. Their second connection was a branch unit of PPC-1 to Madang, in the north of the country. Their third connection was the Coral Sea Cable System which connects Port Moresby and Honiara with Sydney. Their fourth connection is to Indonesia, via a connection to the Kumul domestic submarine cable system.