Thanks, Co-Captain! Mark C said this morning that he tried to call the DGIV office in Jakarta, and it had been set up but "however the call was answered by Indostat." So if you will allow me just one more post in this expensive seat thread before I go back to the engine room:
I don't know how many of you are aware of who Indosat is. Indosat is the nickname for PT (Persero) Indonesian Satellite Corporation. It is the primary telco in Indonesia, linking Indonesia to more than 250 countries. That's who is on the other end of the call that Mark made to Digitcom's Indonesian office! :-)
Check out ISAT on the Jakarta exchange. Oh, you can't get to the Jakarta exchange? No problem... check out IIT on the NYSE!! The BIG BOARD. Think BIG, people! If you look there, you will see that Indosat is a two and a half-billion dollar operation (goes up and down with the exchange rates) that owns and operates four international gateways providing switched and non-switched services through satellite, submarine cable, and microwave. Their stock is down now as a consequence of the Asian meltdown last Fall, from which all of these countries are now starting to recover. Mmm.. bottom fishing?? Wonder if Jimmy likes to fish? :-)
If you had been in Cape Canaveral in Feb of 96, you would have seen an Atlas rocket taking off carrying an important satellite -- the Indonesian Palapa C1 satellite. The word "Palapa" means "unity" in Indonesian, because communications through this satellite would help unite Indonesia's 17,000 islands. And not just Indonesia. It also serves as a gateway to link Vietnam, China, Japan, and Australia. Do some of these countries sound familiar from recent discussions? This satellite and its operations are approximately 25% owned by Indosat, whose offices are on the other end of the calls we are making to DGIV! Indosat controls over 2,500 satellite circuits through 5 or so ground stations. And five gateways with total capacity of around 25,000 telex circuits. And this is where our fearless leader is, and where he has been asked to stay for another week.... Connect the dots ...
Palapa C-1 was just the first of the new Hughes-designed comm birds for Indonesia. There was a follow-on, the Palapa C-2 last summer, and if you are in the space business one thing you learn real quick is that you don't do a follow-up launch if the first one is not successful. So Indosat has two cash cows in the sky :-) But Indosat did not begin with these satellites last year; Palapas have been going up since the early 80's on the Shuttle. Anyone know how much it costs to get a pound of anything into orbit on the Shuttle? (Don't ask NASA, they have a "don't ask don't tell" deal). Well, it is BIG BUCKS, so that this is no fly-by-night operation.
But back to the Indosat story. Indosat was a private company in the 70's, until 1980, when it was bought out by the Indonesian government! Go back to my post this morning and re-read about how foreign governments view communications companies not quite the same way we do. To them they are a strategic resource and affect their national defense. So for the next 25 years, until 1994, Indosat was the only telephone company in Indonesia. Heck even ATT was allowed some lame competitors in the 70's and early 80's, sort of like weakened viruses :-)
In 1994 (refer to my morning message), the dam broke -- deregulation hit Indonesia along with many other countries sort of like the big bang that hit the old Soviet Union in the late 80's. So the government broke it up and allowed it to compete, hoping to get lower prices in the open marketplace. But not just any competition. They did not want the US gorillas coming into their country and using them as their banana republics -- can you blame them? Instead they instituted a carefully controlled set of competition rules in which foreign companies were for all practical purposes excluded.
Until the internet came along, that is... The internet, and technologies such as VoIP, ATM, GSM, and lots of other alphabet soups, are tearing down commerical boundaries, and countries like Indonesia (which is just an example, other emerging economies are similar) realize that they need this technology to grow their economy -- some would even say survive.
Well, when you need technology, who you gonna call? Who's the telco Ghostbuster? The large switching networks and telecomm infrastructure (xDSL, fiber, etc), are being developed by the big bad guys in the US, who they don't want to let in, because once the get it it's really hard to get them out. Kind'a like relative :-) But along comes a small innovative company that can use existing infrastructure and push lots of bits through it (VoIP, 43:1 compression, ATM) with very low overhead. And, gee, their CEO is smart, competent, has been doing this stuff for many years, and is even of Asian heritage! Can you connect the dots...
<Rocketman, back to the engine room> |
