ISP in Indonesia
Copyright By Rudy Rusdiah
Business IT in Indonesia grew steadily at 10-30% for the last five year, but for the last two recent
years have to face major economic and political turbulence. In May 1997 , is Indonesian election
year. Predictions for 1997 made end of 1996, was conservative and worried that the election might
slow down IT business in 1997. But for the first to third quarter of 1997, IT business was good and
proof otherwise, only the last quarter showed a tremendous decline, because of the current
economic turmoil and undervalue of rupiah. The first quarter of 1998 was also bad due to the
undervalue of rupiah and no certainty on how the Government will stabilize its currency. We can
expect that business will improves starting on the third quarter of 1998. Instead of showing growth ,
1997 turn out to be flat and we suspect that there will be even decline in 1998.
Internet in Indonesia
Currently there are more than 40 registered Internet Service Provider(ISP) in Indonesia, mostly
operated in Jakarta although around 20 are in difficulty due to the undervalue of rupiah. Last year
more than 30 registered with the Ministry of Tourism, Post and Telecommunication(Menparpostel).
But at least five of them has operation in various cities in Indonesia, extended to the remote
islands/provinces such as Irian ( TembagaPura), Maluku(Ambon), Sulawesi(UjungPandang).
Hundred of other cities in Sumatra, Jawa, and Bali also connected thru this network of
telecommunication, forming an embryo for the Nusantara 21 project to connect the whole Indonesia
into a future national information superhighway. Like in the rest of the world, Internet started the
virtual, universal and global communication in the next Millenium on top of the phyisical
telecommunication infrastructure , so is Internet in Indonesia. Using the Government
telecommunication infrastructure such as Palapa Satelit, Sea Fiber Optic and Microwave and
copper wire this internet was inter connected to the rest of the world.
The ISP business will be more difficult in 1998, because of many ISP competing to get subscriber
and most of them operate in big cities such as Jakarta, Surabaya, Bandung, Semarang, Medan and
others. It is like battle of the fittest, because it charges the consumer in rupiah, but must pay many
component of its connection fee to Internet gateway in Japan or USA via INDOSAT
/SATELINDO( Indonesian Satelit and Overseas Telecommunication Provider) in US Dollar.
The number of Internet users will still grow following the Internet revolution worldwide and this is the
only hope that the rest of the IT industry can count on. Last year registered about 80,000 internet
user via ISP in Indonesia. Many multinational company in the mining industry has direct and private
Internet connection forming their own intranet wide area network via satelite from their oil platform in
the sea or land. These private network is not count as normal Internet subscriber via ISP.
Despite of economic turmoils, we predict that the growth of the Internet and Intranet user will still be
as good as last year , because people needs to stay competitive and up to date to the rest of the
world and this revolution cannot be stop. Business supporting around Internet and Intranet
infrastructure will still be good, such as modem, ethernet cards , ethernet hubs, intranet solution and
server software. Player Cisco, 3COM are the leader, followed by Bay Networks , Intel. For
Modem US Robotic, Hayes, Intel and Motorola still dominant.
Many small companies are already expose to the internet, especially for email and some might
replace fax machine in the future, because the overseas rate for IDD is considered expensive. |
