Indonesian telecommunications need a paradigm shift<\/p>\n
By Zatni Arbi<\/p>\n
If the world were a perfect place, W.W. Rostow's theory of
\ndevelopment stages might not have looked so ridiculous after all.
\nThe fruit of development would have trickled down to the masses,
\nand our social and economic pictures would be far different from
\nthe reality that we have now.<\/p>\n
If we were living in a perfect society, our friend Immanuel
\nWallerstein would not have come up with his theory of the world's
\neconomic system, because we would not find any instance of his
\ncenter-periphery dichotomy among ourselves.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, our world is not perfect and, to a large
\nextent, Wallerstein had it right.<\/p>\n
Take this beloved country, for example. While the masses (the
\nperiphery) still have to worry about whether they will have
\nsomething to eat tomorrow, some Indonesians (the center) are
\nindulging themselves with Porsches and Ferraris with prices to
\nthe tune of billions of rupiah apiece.<\/p>\n
Another area where the center-periphery gap is obvious is, of
\ncourse, access to the basic telecommunication facility, the old
\ntelephone network.<\/p>\n
Not only are we, Indonesians, starkly divided into the haves
\nand the have-nots, we have also been subjected to a fast growing
\n"Digital Divide" that separates those with access to
\ntelecommunication and information technology from those who have
\nno access, those who are information rich from the information
\npoor.<\/p>\n
Deprived of information, people in the latter group find
\nthemselves trapped in the cycle of poverty and thus will remain
\nin the periphery, generation after generation.<\/p>\n
The irony is that, more than 15 years ago, Sir Donald Maitland
\nand an independent commission concluded their study on world
\ntelecommunications with a set of recommendations.<\/p>\n
The Maitland report, titled The Missing Link, contained, among
\nother things, a call for all of humankind to have easy access to
\nthe most basic telecommunications service by the beginning of the
\n21st century.<\/p>\n
Needless to say, we are far short in Indonesia of achieving
\nthat goal. For a population of 209 million people, there are only
\nsix million main telephone lines available.<\/p>\n
Wrong paradigm<\/p>\n
Looking back, the failure to provide even basic telephone
\nservices to a larger portion of our population was caused by the
\nfact that the development of telecommunications in the past was
\nbased on a misguided paradigm.<\/p>\n
For many years, our telecom operators were regarded, and
\ntherefore were also forced to behave, as profit centers, as
\nmoneymaking machines for the government. They were forced to
\nconcentrate on maximum profitability, as their performance was
\nmeasured by how high they would rank on the list of the country's
\ncorporate taxpayers.<\/p>\n
While inefficiency stole some of their profits, not enough of
\nwhat was left found their way into further investment in
\ninfrastructure.<\/p>\n
It was sad, because even back in 1970s communications scholars
\nwere already stressing the strong correlation between investment
\nin telecommunications and economic growth in a given region.<\/p>\n
Paper after paper have been presented in thousands of seminars
\nto make the point clear. Had our policymakers early on heeded
\nthese recommendations, we would not have ended up with only 5.7
\nmillion fixed telephone lines and we would not have the lowest
\nteledensity among the founding countries of ASEAN.<\/p>\n
According to the latest data from the International
\nTelecommunication Union (ITU), our teledensity is 2.91 telephone
\nlines per 100 people, while the entire world's teledensity is
\n14.9.<\/p>\n
It was also strange, as the Listrik Masuk Desa (electricity
\nfor rural areas) program was not accompanied by an equally
\nintense effort to distribute access to telecommunications to the
\nmasses.<\/p>\n
It was curious why, at that time, no one spoke of a Telepon
\nMasuk Desa initiative? Much as electricity is important to
\nproductivity, the telephone, as experiences in many other parts
\nof the world have shown, would bring about a tremendous increase
\nin income and improvement in quality of life for the local and
\nrural people.<\/p>\n
A lot of related questions have been nagging us for many
\nyears. However, rather than dwell in the past that no one could
\nchange, we should perhaps look forward.<\/p>\n
What should we do with the duopolistic telecommunication
\nstructure? Should we continue to protect it from open competition
\nor follow Singapore's recent bold move and totally liberalize our
\ntelecom sector?<\/p>\n
One of the arguments for it is that, as technology advances at
\nan increasing pace, we keep witnessing the arrival of new
\nsolutions for telecommunications.<\/p>\n
A report in the May 22, 2000, issue of Fortune, for example,
\ndescribes a new technology being developed by AirFiber and
\nTeraBeam. Using laser beams without any fiber cable-which makes
\nit cheaper to implement, the new technology, capable of up to a
\none gigabit per second (Gbps) transfer rate, seems to be ideally
\nsuited to residential areas.<\/p>\n
Dialogic, an Intel subsidiary, is working on open-standard
\ncomputer telephony (CT) technology that will finally enable us to
\nplace telephone devices on the computer network. The list of
\nfresh innovations and promising technology goes on and on.<\/p>\n
Besides, there are also various trends that we must not
\nignore.<\/p>\n
First, data traffic is quickly catching up with and will soon
\nsurpass voice traffic, while the old telephone infrastructure
\ndesigned to handle short conversational calls is not the ideal
\nconduit for data traffic.<\/p>\n
Second, the number of cell phone users is expected to surpass
\nthe number of fixed telephone lines in 2010. Within the first
\nthree years of its development, according to Yoshio Utsumi,
\ncurrent secretary-general of the ITU, 276 million people became
\nmobile telephone subscribers all over the world.<\/p>\n
What is the number of fixed telephone subscribers in the first
\n100 years of its existence? Only 243 million. In Indonesia alone,
\naccording to ITU's data, the number of mobile phone subscribers
\njumped from around 1 million in 1998 to 2.2 million in 1999, when
\nthey accounted for 26.8 percent of total telephone subscribers.<\/p>\n
Third, the cost of the cell phone devices will continue to
\ndrop while their capabilities will continue to increase. Fourth,
\nVoice over IP -- the technology that allows voice communications
\nto ride on the Internet -- has been taking over an increasing
\nslice of the conventional telephone business.<\/p>\n
Just think of it: How much have you saved on telephone bills
\nsince you started using e-mail?<\/p>\n
Fifth, the industry, with its mighty power, will continue to
\nbring technological breakthroughs to the market, whether we need
\nit or not. WAP is a prime example.<\/p>\n
So, what should we do? Perhaps we should just forget about
\nwaiting until PT Telkom, together with its KSO partners, manage
\nto put a copper telephone line into every home.<\/p>\n
As the projection made by ITU suggests, revenues from the
\ndomestic telephone and fax services will continue to decline.
\nWith dwindling revenues, it will be difficult for us to expect
\nthem to have the capability to expand the infrastructure.<\/p>\n
Perhaps it is time for a completely radical measure. The
\nTelecommunications Act, known as Law No. 39 of 1999, will take
\neffect in September, but perhaps the changes that it will bring
\nwill not be radical enough to really vitalize this sector.<\/p>\n
Perhaps we can just open the door as wide as possible to our
\ntelecommunications sector, and let all players -- local, regional
\nand global -- compete with their technological offerings and
\nservices. Give the consumers the freedom to decide which one they
\nwill use.<\/p>\n
Why? Because telecommunications should play the role of an
\nengine of growth. It should not continue to be treated as a cash
\ncow for the government, the "center" in Wallerstein's world
\nsystem theory. Instead, it should be a means to help bring well-
\nbeing and prosperity to the periphery as well.<\/p>",
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