After tests, Indosat says it is ready for millennium bug

JAKARTA (JP): Publicly listed state-owned telecommunications company PT Indosat said on Tuesday it was prepared for the millennium bug.

Indosat general manager for planning and engineering Djoko Prajitno said the company announced its readiness for the millennium bug, also known as the Y2K problem, months ago. He added that the company had run tests to ensure its systems were Y2K compliant.

The company has also prepared a contingency plan to anticipate possible failures, he said.

"We declared 100 percent Y2K compliance in May, after a series of tests conducted in accordance to the standards set by the British Standard Institution," he said at a seminar on the impact of the Y2K problem on Indosat's operations.

The company's vital systems and facilities, including gateways in Jakarta, Medan, Batam and Surabaya, and the international transmission link and interlink services through earth stations and submarine cables, are all Y2K compliant, he said.

Indosat allocated no less than US$5 million for its Y2K compliance program.

Djoko said Indosat placed a high priority on the millennium bug because a failure to anticipate problems would seriously affect the company's business and services, all of which were computerized.

"Problems that may occur if we fail to deal with the Y2K problem are interruption in services and faulty billing. The problems would cause a huge financial loss to Indosat and affect service to customers," he said.

The millennium bug refers to problems computerized systems could face at the turn of the century if they fail to distinguish between 1900 and 2000 when reading dates.

The glitch could cause computers to shut down or malfunction. Power supplies may drop, telephones and transportation systems may stop operating and automated banking transactions may fail.

The United States-based Gartner Group, a Y2K-compliance monitoring body, said in a recent report that Indonesia was among some 30 developing nations most prone to Y2K problems, with some 66 percent of businesses in the country at risk of being affected.

Djoko said the completion of the Y2K tests and conversion program was a guarantee Indosat would be able to provide reliable telephone, Internet and satellite transponder leasing services to customers and business partners here and overseas.

The government recently said it was upbeat the country's telecommunications sector would soon be Y2K compliant.

Another state-owned telecommunications company, PT Telkom, which controls the country's local fixed lines and domestic long- distance telephone services, has said it is 90 percent Y2K compliant.

Telkom is scheduled to make the most critical components of its system, including billing and satellite transmissions, 100 percent Y2K compliant by the end of month.

Telkom has spent at least Rp 16.3 billion on its Y2K compliance program in the first quarter of this year. (cst)