Employees, students boost Internet use total to eight million

Leony Aurora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Corporate employees in the convenience of their cubicles and students killing time between classes sent the number of Internet users in Indonesia rocketing to more than eight million last year, almost doubling the 4.5 million in 2002.

The Indonesian Association of Internet Service Providers (APJII) said on Monday that while the number of subscribers in 2003 was modest at 865,706, the number of users reached 8.08 million.

For 2004, the association estimates the number of users will reach 12 million.

APJII collected data from Internet providers, differentiating subscribers, as anyone or any company registered with one of the providers, from users, as anybody using the Internet.

"Many corporations now provide Internet services for their employees," said Heru Nugroho, the association's secretary- general.

Employees communicating via cyberspace accounted for 39.5 percent of users in 2003, while the year before it was 19 percent.

Another sign of the trend for companies to become more Internet-savvy is the 3,764 new Indonesian domains listed last year -- mostly owned by corporations -- bringing total Indonesian domains to 19,167.

"Everyone now has an e-mail address printed on their name card. Otherwise, people will think it's just a kaki lima (streetside) company," said Heru.

Schools had also joined the race, he said, for fear of being left behind.

Students are forgetting about Internet kiosks and logging on at their schools since the computers and connections are provided just around the corner from their classrooms.

"About 32 percent of users are students browsing in schools and universities, while Internet users in kiosks dropped way down to around 3 percent," said Heru.

Internet kiosks initially mushroomed around university campuses but declined a couple of years ago as the novelty wore off and personal use spread.

The proportion of users connecting to the cyberworld via Internet kiosks has steadily declined, from 42 percent in 2001 to 26.8 percent in 2002 and to 3.2 percent last year.

"We need to find an application with wide appeal to revive the Internet kiosk business," said Michael Sunggiardi, a presidium member of the Indonesian Internet Kiosks Association (Awari).

Of the Internet kiosks in Indonesia, about 80 percent were now used as networked games centers, he said.

"A couple of years ago, chat programs were what lured customers. People stayed for hours (chatting)," he added.

Internet kiosks would not be able to survive if people only used them for browsing the Net or e-mailing, he said.

APJII estimates that currently there are only 1,700 stalls from the 2,500 to 3,000 in 2002.

---------------------------------------------------------------- Year Subscribers Users ---------------------------------------------------------------- 1998 134,000 512,000 1999 256,000 1,000,000 2000 400,000 1,900,000 2001 581,000 4,200,000 2002 667,002 4,500,000 2003 865,706 8,080,000 ---------------------------------------------------------------- Source: Indonesian Association of Internet Service Providers (APJII)