Govt considers using CDMA for USO project

Arya Abhiseka The Jakarta Post Jakarta

The government may apply the increasingly popular CDMA telecommunications connection technology in its ambitious project to provide basic telephony services in villages, according to an official.

Gatot Dewa Broto, spokesman for the Directorate General of Post and Telecommunications at the Ministry of Transportation, said the Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technology cost less in installing telephone lines.

"Unlike building fixed telephone lines which could cost about US$1,000 per line, CDMA only costs no more than $200 per line," he told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

The government is planning to provide fixed telecommunication lines in villages in the country through a project called Universal Service Obligation (USO). Under the program, fixed line telecommunications companies are required to contribute to a fund to finance the installation of fixed lines.

The government is currently speeding up the process to connect by 2005 some of the remaining 43,022 villages and 870 subdistrict capitals unconnected by any form of telecommunications.

Currently, there are only 7.82 million fixed lines available for more than 220 million people.

Gatot said that by using CDMA technology, the cost of the project was expected to be cheaper.

In order to connect several areas, CDMA requires only the establishment of a base transceiver station or a wireless telecommunications device used to transmit radio frequencies over the air interface.

However, Gatot said that CDMA had its own flaws as it required additional costs when interconnecting with other phone systems, among others the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) that is currently used in Indonesia.

"Although it is cheap to establish CDMA, it will add costs when we need to interconnect it with another system. However, we did the math and it is still cheaper than building fixed telephone lines, so we are considering the possibility of using CDMA," he said.

The government is currently drafting a decree that will regulate, among other things, telephone operators' obligation to contribute to a fund for the USO.