Tue, 18 Feb 2003

Government to finalize phone services decree

Arya Abhiseka The Jakarta Post Jakarta

The government is drafting a decree that will, among other things, oblige telephone operators to contribute to a fund for the development of basic telephony services in more than 43,000 villages and sub-district capitals nationwide that currently lack such services.

The regulation forms part of the implementation of the United Service Obligation (USO) program aimed at providing phone services for all citizens, according to Gatot Dewa Broto, a spokesman for the Directorate General of Posts and Telecommunications at the Ministry of Transportation.

The USO was agreed upon during the ITU conference in Nairobi, Kenya, in 1995, when all countries were advised to provide their citizens with basic telecommunications facilities, such as telephone, fax and telegram services.

Furthermore, Gatot said, the Asia Pacific Telecommunications (APT) organization at its summit in Tokyo in 2000, issued the so- called Tokyo Declaration calling on all member countries to provide all of their citizens with access to telecommunications by 2005.

Currently, Indonesia has a fixed line penetration rate of about 3 percent, meaning only about 7.82 million fixed lines are available for more than 220 million people.

There are 43,022 villages and 870 subdistrict capitals which still have no access to basic phone services, according to ministry data.

Gatot said the government has targeted the provision of such services to all villages and sub-district capitals by 2005 in line with the Tokyo Declaration.

Aside from the contributions made by telephone operators, funds for the USO program would be taken from the state budget and loans, Gatot said, adding the total funding required for the project was Rp 475 billion.

The portion of these funds to be provided by telecoms operators was still being discussed by the team drafting the decree, according to Gatot.

The government was committed to starting the USO program soon, while waiting for the finalization of the decree, Gatot said.

"This year alone, we have allocated some Rp 90 billion (US$10.1 million) from the state budget to provide basic phone services in more than 7,500 villages," he said.

Gatot said that at the beginning, the government would handle the development, funding, supervising and control of the USO program with some of the expenses to be covered by the telecoms operators after the regulation was finalized.

Next year, the government plans to expand the USO program into more than 17,000 villages.

In 2005, the USO program will be implemented in another 18,500 villages to complete the provision of basic phone services in every village in Indonesia.

Previously, the government, through state-owned telecommunications company Perumtel, was the sole party responsible for providing all citizens with basic phone services.

However, after Perumtel was privatized as PT Telkom, the implementation of the USO has fallen into abeyance given that the company is now a profit-oriented corporation.

The economic crisis that hit the country in the middle of 1997 further diverted Telkom's attention from the USO program.

"Prior to the crisis, the telecoms operator allocated about 20 percent of its profits to the USO program. However, now that figure is down to about 5 percent," he said.