Indonesia is ready for multimedia era: Minister

JAKARTA (JP): Despite the low penetration of telecommunications infrastructure per Indonesian inhabitant, the country is ready to enter the multimedia era in the next century, according to Minister of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications Joop Ave.

The minister said Saturday that Indonesia had a clear vision and feasible program to enter the multimedia era.

"We have prepared students to be scientists in this field. What we have to prepare is the hardware," Joop said when officially opening Asia-Pacific Telecom '97 at the Jakarta fairground in Kemayoran.

All telecommunications companies and related firms should have a strong commitment to prepare to enter the multimedia era in the next century, Joop said.

He highlighted that the agreement signed by the state-owned telecommunications firm PT Telkom and Lucent Technologies of the United States yesterday to develop a center for research, development and innovation reflected the former's strong commitment to multimedia.

The five-day event, which also features a ministerial round- table meeting, public lectures and a conference, is focusing on competitiveness through multimedia and wireless technology in the global society of the 21st century.

Multimedia denotes a mean superhighway (high-capacity infrastructure network) which allows people to gain information. The information, including video, data, text, still images and moving pictures, will be accessible within a similar time through a single medium operated by a user. The user, therefore, is free to enjoy a variety of information interactively or non- interactively.

Indonesia is preparing a multimedia project dubbed Nusantara 21. In some aspects, the concepts are the same as Singapore One and the Multimedia Super Corridor in Malaysia.

Nusantara 21 is designed to make the country a fully fledged member of the global information society by early in the next century. Nusantara means archipelago and "twenty-one" is used to show that Indonesia will have information and telecommunications infrastructure of a level suitable for the 21st century.

"Indonesia's is an ambitious plan, but we know what kind of development it is," Joop said.

He stressed that the country would be one of the world's nations actively developing multimedia and telecommunications.

In a related development, a senior executive of Telkom's research and development division, Suryatin Setiawan, announced here Saturday that his company had agreed with Lucent to develop a research center in Bandung.

"Telkom and Lucent are investing Rp 12 billion and US$35 million to develop the center. We are preparing three programs, tele-education, intelligence networking and telecommunications network management. They are scheduled to be completed in the next year," he said, adding that a number of experts from Lucent's Bell Labs would visit Telkom next year as part of the joint project.

Telkom also signed other deals with state-owned telecommunications equipment maker PT Inti and with some private firms.

The deal with Inti will enable Telkom to improve its expertise in telecommunications and information design. Telkom, together with its pension fund foundation, PT Delta Sejati and PT Kliring also set up a joint venture company to coordinate telecommunications interconnection billing charges nationwide.

Separately, PT Multimedia Nusantara, a private multimedia provider, signed an agreement with NHK television station of Japan.

Multimedia Nusantara is 31 percent owned by Telkom, 15 percent by PT Indosat, 5 percent by state-owned television broadcaster Yayasan TVRI and 49 percent by PT Indocitra Grahabawana, a private firm controlled by businessman Sudwikatmono.

Through the agreement NHK will supply the programs for cable television operated by Multimedia Nusantara under the Metra brand. Fifty-four cable television stations in 29 nations currently use NHK programs.

Metra's president Soehana said that his company would invest Rp 53 billion to install 8,000 home-passed lines for the multimedia (which includes pay-per-view television) services in the Menteng and Pondok Indah areas in Jakarta.

"Some Rp 288 billion is needed for out plan to expand capacity to 50,000 more homes in Jakarta next year," he said. (icn)