An ambitious plan aiming to roll out "cheap and meaningful" broadband to 20 percent of the Indonesian population by 2012 is gearing up in Jakarta, with strong support from the government and corporate sectors.
Investor Group Against Digital Divide (IGADD), the not-for-profit think tank behind the plan, aims to increase current broadband penetration levels 20-fold through the use of innovative technology and a business plan they say will help bridge the "digital divide" between rich and poor.
Currently, only 1-2 percent of the population has access to broadband, the group said.
The brains behind the operation, IGADD director Craig Warren Smith -- a former Harvard professor and advisor to the UN on the "digital divide" -- said closing the "digital divide" between rich and poor had been one of the biggest themes for governments in the past decade.
"Since then, the world has been looking for a location that shows how market forces could be harnessed to support human potential. Perhaps Indonesia will be that place," Smith said.
Ilham Habibie, chairman of IGADD, is confident the group's goal of "20by12" can be achieved using the country's existing telecommunications infrastructure and recent technological innovations such as Wimax, wireless networks that cover large areas, and 3G mobile phone technology.
The plan is as much about generating "bottom-up economic growth" as it is about improving telecommunications infrastructure for profit.
"We will be developing financial formulas, but making sure broadband becomes a tool for Indonesians' own empowerment," Habibie said.
Dozens of companies, universities and NGOs from Indonesia and abroad are working together to make the plan work.
Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB) professor Armein Langi, an expert on rural technologies and one of the think tank's founders, said ITB already had two "test bed" villages in West Java, established last year and funded by Delft University of Technology in Holland.
The village of Tuntlut, 5 kilometers north of Bandung, and Cinta Mekar, in the Subang region, have already been wired for broadband.
Langi said it cost Rp 10 million to set up a village and once the network was established people could use the network for free.
What is needed now is for Indonesian engineers to create software useful for rural people that will aid their economic, social and political development.
Educational software that would help to ensure all teachers have equal access to teaching resources is already under development at ITB and is being funded by Microsoft.
In addition, telecommunications company Qualcomm has set up a laboratory at ITB and is developing rural applications for mobile phones.
On March 15, the rector of ITB will be hosting a day-long seminar for 29 other rectors of major Indonesian universities, where, among other matters, they will consider how best to apply telecommunications technologies for the benefit of ordinary Indonesians.
Following that, for the first time, Indonesian alumni clubs, including Harvard, MIT and Stanford, will meet to consider their role in the plan. A related lecture series will run at the Habibie Center from March through April.
The program will be launched nationwide in October.
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