Communications service proposed in rural areas

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Telecommunications Society (Mastel) has proposed the establishment of a cheaper personal communication service in rural areas to boost the telecommunications penetration rate in Indonesia.

Mastel's working group on Personal Communications System- Indonesia (PCS-Indonesia), recently said it would be a simple and promising project.

Mastel said the entry barrier was the biggest challenge to expanding the penetration rate of personal telephones in developing nations as conventional personal communication needs a device which has the customer's identification number. To call someone, a customer has to dial a number which is connected with someone's device. As a developing nation Indonesia faces this problem.

"The existing PCS standard can be afforded by only 5 percent of Indonesia's 200 million population," Mastel said.

PCS is commonly associated with the next generation of sophisticated digital wireless telephone systems which includes the Personal Communications System (PCS-1900) and the Digital Cordless System (DCS-1800) from Europe, the Digital Enhance Cordless Telephone and the Personal Handy-phone Service (PHS) from Japan, and the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology from the U.S.

"To increase the penetration rate, the ID numbers and devices must be separated, allowing people who need personal telephone access, to have just an ID number, which will cost them the pulses (call traffic usage) they use," Mastel said.

For devices, people could use any terminals that could bare their personal identification number (PIN), so any call for their IDs would be rerouted to the initial device. The device itself can be handy as an ashtray, so people could insert their PIN to the device which is designed to carry about 15 PINs, Mastel said.

A Mastel executive said the facility would be a wireless intercom network in rural areas. "Intercom has proven itself a popular and effective communication means several years ago in rural areas."

Microcell

Mastel said that to reduce investment costs, wireless technology with the microcell approach would be suitable for PCS- Indonesia, which might provide an alternative for the connection into the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN).

"Operating areas will be divided into small spots, each equal to one square-kilometer which will be operated by single unit operation. Each unit, practically, will use a simple branch exchange (PABX) with 200 extensions connected to PSTN an using wireless transmission for connection to the extensions or mobile phone devices."

Mastel said the system would be able to carry voice and Internet services and the proposed speed would be up to 32 kilobytes a second.

Several small businesspeople grouped in the Indonesian Association of Telecommunications Kiosks have proposed to develop PCS-Indonesia. The group has selected Yogyakarta as the trial operation site for the cheap PCS-Indonesia.

Mastel said almost 70 percent of Indonesians lived in rural areas in which small groups of people living in the same area could develop their own telephone network.

"They just need to buy wireless PABX and each household in the area can be connected by using extension facilities. So the PABX would operate like an island of telecommunications services.

Penetration

Besides the Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications, the Advanced Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) and the Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT-450), the three systems currently used in Indonesia, the government plans to adopt CDMA, PHS and DCS-1800.

The penetration of fixed and cellular telecommunications in Indonesia is low. There are five million fixed-telephone lines and 600,000 cellular lines.

The government expects to reach a ratio of 20 fixed telephone lines for every 100 people by 2020 when the population is expected to reach 250 million.

In the first stage Indonesia aims to have four fixed telephone lines for each 100 people by 1998, and 10 per 100 people by 2000 and 20 per 100 people by 2020.

The number of fixed-telephone lines in 2020 is estimated to be at least 20 percent of the population, while the number of mobile cellular telephone lines should be between 10 percent and 20 percent of the country's telephone lines.

The Ministry of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications, had won support from the National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) to install more lines during the current Sixth Five-Year Development Plan which ends in March 1999.

Last November Bappenas supported the new installation target of eight million lines for the Sixth Five-Year Development Plan which includes 6.7 million fixed-telephone lines and a network capacity for 1.3 million mobile telephones. The government had originally aimed to install five million lines including 600,000 cellular lines in this period. (icn)