ADSL, a great way to access the Net -- but at a price

ADSL, a great way to access the Net -- but at a price

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): Have you lost the excitement of having a
nonstop, cable TV-based connection to the Internet?

Does your browser seem to crawl in the evenings and during
weekends?

If you had paid US$300 for the old cable modem, are you
regretting your investment? If your answers are mostly
affirmative, you are not alone.

The downside of the once speedy cable Internet service is that
the bandwidth is shared. What it means is that its performance is
affected by the number of subscribers that are using it at any
given time.

So, as your neighbors were all checking Detik.com in the early
morning of July 23 to find out about Gus Dur's maklumat (decree),
you would have had a painfully slow connection to the Internet.

If the cable network company fails to anticipate the growth of
its subscriber base and does nothing to increase its capacity
accordingly, your access speed will simply continue to
deteriorate.

So, before your cable Internet access becomes slower than your
dial-up connection, you may want to start considering ADSL, a new
Internet access service that has become available in some parts
of Greater Jakarta, Bogor and Serang.

As your location should be within five kilometers of a
telephone switching office, you will have to first check with PT
Telkom whether your area is already covered by the service. You
can call 147 for this information.

The Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line, or ADSL, is a
broadband Internet access that has gained a lot of popularity
everywhere in the world.

In Southeast Asia, Singapore was the first to offer this
service, which they called Magix.

Alcatel, one of the world's largest telecommunications
vendors, has been largely responsible for the development and
widespread adoption of the ADSL technology.

ADSL uses the same copper wires that run from your telephone
operator's switching office into your house.

However, the circuits have been fine-tuned so that the same
phone line can also transfer digital data at a high speed. Better
still, you can continue to use the same line for phone
conversation and fax transmission while your PC is accessing the
Web.

Telkom offers three classes of ADSL services: The 384
kilobytes per second, 512 Kbps Limited and 512 Kbps Unlimited. If
you choose the lowest class, you will get a 24-hour access to the
Internet service provider (ISP)of your choice with free traffic
up to 500 megabytes. If you exceed the 500 MB limit, Telkom will
charge you an additional Rp 500 for every megabyte of traffic.

If you choose the more expensive 512 Limited, you will have
500 MB of free data traffic. Any additional megabytes of traffic
will also cost you Rp 500.

If you want an unlimited access to the Internet, go for the
512 Unlimited, which will allow you to download huge audio and
video files without incurring additional charge.

But, what about the monthly subscription charge?

Telkom charges Rp 250,000 for the 384 Kbps service. The faster
512 Kbps Limited will cost you slightly higher, i.e. Rp 300,000.

If you want the unlimited access, you should be prepared to
pay Rp 1,200,000 per month. The setup charge ranges from Rp
250,000 to Rp 500,000.

Unfortunately, as is the case with your dial-up access, you
will be billed by both the telecom operator and the ISP.

Once you subscribe to Telkom's ADSL service, you will still
have to subscribe to the access service offered by any of the
four ISPs currently on the network: CBNNet, MetroNet, LinkNet or
Telkom's own ASTINet.

If you choose CBNNet, the setup charge will be Rp 250,000. The
monthly charge for 250 MB of data traffic, which is its cheapest
ADSL service, will be Rp 350,000.

The unlimited ADSL service will cost you a whopping Rp 5
million a month. For CBNNet's rates, you can visit
www.cbn.net.id/mmaprice.html.

So, if you are already unhappy with your current cable
Internet service, you have an alternative. ADSL is faster and the
performance is not affected by how many of your neighbors are
also accessing the Internet at the same time, but it certainly
cost a lot, lot more.

The cheapest service will cost you Rp 350,000 (to be paid to
the ISP) + Rp 250,000 (to be paid to Telkom) and Rp 60,000 tax
(to be paid to the tax office to support the government).

And do not forget that you will have to purchase your own ADSL
modem, which will cost you between US$170 and US$250. Clearly, at
this stage, ADSL is not for everybody -- yet.