Koes joins the archipelago via cellular links<\/p>\n
By Johannes Simbolon and I. Christianto<\/p>\n
JAKARTA (JP): A group of 50 high school graduates sailed to
\nAustralia some decades ago to pursue on their study on the
\nColombo Plan scholarship. Among them were two girls from Madiun
\nand Kediri, small towns in East Java's hinterland, who wished to
\nbe engineers.<\/p>\n
The girls finished their studies. There is nothing special in
\nthe story if it ends that way. But, it is special indeed, since
\nboth girls ended up becoming the first female engineers to work
\nin Australian telecommunication.<\/p>\n
One of the young women was the soft-spoken Koesmarihati
\nSugondo, who is now president of the cellular phone firm,
\nTelkomsel.<\/p>\n
As far as the obsolete perception that engineering is males'
\nwork goes, Koes said, Indonesian women were luckier than their
\nAustralian counterparts.<\/p>\n
At the time when she left for Australia in the 1960s,
\nIndonesia already had a number of female engineers and they were
\nwell accepted in the field. In Australia, Koes said, there were
\nfew female engineers and those women who did venture into the
\nprofession were not well received.<\/p>\n
Koes said that a large Australian company would only accept
\nher proposal for work training after her professor intervened.
\nHer acceptance was quite a surprise for the local people.<\/p>\n
Born on Oct. 9, 1942, in Bogor, West Java, Koes spent her
\nchildhood in many different places because her father worked as a
\nforestry inspector and had to move from one place to another. Her
\nfather died in Madiun when she was very young, and the family of
\nseven children -- Koes is the fourth child -- decided to stay in
\nthe town. Her mother got a job at a local printing company to
\nfeed the big family.<\/p>\n
Aware that her mother couldn't afford her study to university,
\nKoes looked for a scholarship. She won the Colombo Plan
\nscholarship along with 49 students from across the country. Among
\nthem was Sugondo, her future husband.<\/p>\n
Colombo Plan is an organization founded by the Commonwealth
\ncountries in 1950 to help develop South and Southeast Asian
\ncountries. One of its programs awards scholarships to students
\nfrom these areas.<\/p>\n
Career<\/p>\n
Koes received her Bachelor of Engineering degree from
\nUniversity of Tasmania, Hobart, in 1966, and returned to
\nIndonesia the following year to work for the state electricity
\ncompany, PLN. Here tenure there was short since love pulled her
\nback to Australia a year later. She married Sugondo, who was
\ncompleting his architecture studies in the kangaroo country.<\/p>\n
She remained in Australia until 1975, working in several firms
\nincluding the Telecom Australia (now Telstra).<\/p>\n
Upon her return to Indonesia, she applied for a job with the
\nstate Perumtel telecommunication firm (now PT Telkom) and waited
\nfor eleven months for a reply. By that time she had taken a job
\nwith a private cable firm at salary five times higher than what
\nwas being offered by Perumtel.<\/p>\n
The salary was not what drew her to the state
\ntelecommunications company. \"Perumtel has a national-scale work.
\nIt has a wider outlook,\" she said.<\/p>\n
Her first assignment was to supervise the installment of
\ntelephone cables in Jakarta. As a supervisor, she stayed up until
\nearly in the morning watching over her 200 all-male crew working
\nin the ditches, \"so that none of them cheated me,\" she said.<\/p>\n
Her career climbed steadily. In 1993 and 1994, she chaired the
\ndevelopment division of PT Telkom, was responsible for the plan
\nto lay between 50,000 and one million telephone lines in the
\ncountry each year.<\/p>\n
Koes lobbied for laying fiber optic networks instead of copper
\ncables. Many parties protested, including the domestic cable
\nmakers. But she pushed on with the plan.<\/p>\n
In hindsight, her decision was strategic genius. Fiber optic
\ncables enlarge telephone transmission capacity, allowing more
\npeople to be connected to the telephone grid. A fiber optic as
\nthin as a hair can contain up to 2,000 circuits, while a copper
\nstring of the same size can only hold one circuit.
\nPerhaps more importantly, fiber optic cables can also be used for
\nother services, including television broadcast. Koes' decision
\nabout fiber optic networks will enable PT Telkom to enter the
\nmultimedia business and the Information Age.<\/p>\n
In 1994, PT Telkom began construction on its first submarine
\nfiber optic network, linking Tanjungkarang in Lampung and
\nDenpasar in Bali. Since then, it has linked all the main islands
\nin the country with fiber optic networks.<\/p>\n
In 1995, PT Telkom restructured its organization. New boards
\nof directors were formed, including one of her peers. Koes was
\nnot chosen to sit on the board but she was not disappointed.<\/p>\n
Two months later, she found out why she was \"left behind\".
\nMinister of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications Joop Ave had
\nsaved to her for the top position at the newly-formed cellular
\nphone company Telkomsel.<\/p>\n
Pilot project<\/p>\n
Cellular phones were not a new thing for Koes. As PT Telkom's
\ndirector of development, she was assigned to set up the Global
\nSystem for Mobile communications (GSM) cellular pilot project in
\nBatam and Bintan islands, which was successfully completed in two
\nmonths.<\/p>\n
Telkomsel was initially co-owned by PT Telkom (51 percent) and
\nPT Indosat (49 percent). Later, as new investors came in, the
\nshare ownership composition changed with Telkom possessing 42.72
\npercent of the shares, Indosat 35 percent, PTT Dutch Telecom
\n17.28 percent, and Setdco Megacel Asia, owned by Indonesian
\nbusinessman Setiawan Djody, 5 percent.<\/p>\n
\"We are proud of the fact that the shares of domestic
\ncompanies are still larger than that of the foreign company,\"
\nsaid Koes, the mother of three who loves morning exercise.<\/p>\n
Telkomsel, she said, will benefit from its alliance with a
\nforeign company since the operation of telecommunication requires
\ndetailed management, a strength of foreign companies.<\/p>\n
Today Telkomsel has recorded 135,000 subscribers of the total
\n450,000 subscribers nationwide, and hopes to reach between
\n150,000 and 180,000 subscribers by the end of 1996, up from the
\nannual target of 120,000 subscribers.<\/p>\n
She is optimistic that the number of subscribers will reach
\nthree million by 2001 because Indonesia's population is becoming
\nmore urban, more affluent, and the cost of cellular service is
\ndropping.<\/p>\n
Although Telkomsel can't claim the country's largest number of
\nsubscribers at present, Koes said, the firm can claim the widest
\ncoverage area in Indonesia, and the largest number of base
\ntransceiver stations (BTS) in the country. The company plans to
\nreach all provincial capitals and the surrounding areas and the
\nlargest part of Java by 1997.<\/p>\n
\"We want to remain a leading cellular service provider in this
\ncountry and to attain the world-class standard by 1998. We have
\nassigned a task force for the world-class standard,\" she said.<\/p>\n
As the competition among cellular companies turns tighter,
\nTelkomsel, which now employs 500 workers, up from the 50 workers
\nwho started with the company, is determined to stay ahead by
\nimproving its service and technology. The newest services it
\nprovides to its subscribers is the so-called short message, voice
\nmail, data and facsimile transmission.<\/p>\n
In the future all companies will offer similar facilities and
\ntechnologies, and that the cost of these services will decrease.
\nKoes believes the best strategy for Telkomsel is to capture as
\nmuch of the prime market as possible before its competitors do,
\nand then strive to retain those subscribers by continually
\nimproving their services.<\/p>\n
\"In the end, it's the subscribers who will benefit from the
\ncompetition,\" she said.<\/p>",
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