Communications service proposed in rural areas

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)