Indonesia prepares national information network

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia is preparing a massive telecommunications plan to further enter the Information Technology era. The project, Nusantara 21, is designed to connect the whole archipelago to the information superhighway.

This year, the Year of Telecommunications (and Cooperatives) is timely because Indonesia is starting to make great strides in global telecommunications and information technology (IT). The project will involve both private and government participation.

Minister of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications Joop Ave said that the country had no choice but to embark on such a massive project. Otherwise, Indonesia would be left behind by other nations.

Joop said that IT, defined as the integration of telecommunications and computing hardware and software, would have the main components of telecommunications, the computer industry and television broadcasting, as well as the media industry.

"As a result of the IT revolution, every country, including Indonesia, is now confronted with a new world economy. This new world economy has clear features, is high speed, knowledge intensive, increasingly transactional and highly disciplinarian."

He said that all countries and all sectors would have to increasingly compete along the dimensions of agility, government and private; constant learning and upgrading; networking; and reliability.

A pact, the Information Technology Agreement (ITA), was signed in March by trade superpowers and developing nations, securing a US$600 billion deal to scrap tariffs on information technology products and is a big boost to consumers and manufacturers in the booming industry.

Thirty-nine countries representing 92.5 percent of the world trade in infotech products committed themselves to the pact, which will cut tariffs on computers, telecommunications products, semiconductors, semiconductor manufacturing equipment, software and CD ROMs and scientific instruments by 2000.

The participating nations include the United States, the 15- member European Union, Japan, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong, Iceland, Indonesia, South Korea, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, Turkey, Costa Rica, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Israel, India, Macau, Malaysia, New Zealand, Rumania, the Slovak Republic, Thailand and Taiwan.

ITA signatories have pledged to eliminate tariffs on products such as computers, software and integrated circuits by 2000, although seven industrializing countries have been given a deadline of 2005.

Indonesia does not want to be left behind its neighbors in developing information technology.

Malaysia has an ambitious project dubbed Multimedia Super Corridor, while Singapore has its own ambition to be an intelligent island.

Nusantara 21 includes the development of multimedia technology in several big cities and wideband superlanes by 2001. State- owned PT Telkom has been assigned to coordinate the project in cooperation with other institutions, ministries and private parties.

Nusantara 21 is the country's next major breakthrough in telecommunications technology after deciding in 1976 to develop Palapa, a communications satellite system.

The project will link the country's 27 provincial capitals dominated by 155 Mbps widebands. All existing telecommunications infrastructure, including satellites, conventional and terrestrial cables, submarine cables and terrestrial radio links are to be linked to the new massive telecommunication networks.

Major cities and district capitals should be hooked up by 2001. By then, educational, cultural, health, trade, research and science, tourism, public service and government applications will have been sufficiently developed to benefit from the telecommunications highway.

The project will include Archipelagic Super-lane, Multimedia Cities and Nusantara Multimedia Community Access Centers.

Any satellites, including the Palapa-B, Palapa-C, Garuda and the Indostar series, as well as other personal communications service satellites under operation, will facilitate this access.

Indonesia's agrarian society will be able to have voice-rich community links, a system offering efficient information and technology applications.

Infrastructure

Such a network of services will also enhance private activities, including finance and banking, education, trade and other development activities.

However, the project will face a number of barriers due to the current poor telecommunications facilities.

Indonesia's current telephone density figure is still very low, less than two fixed telephone lines for every 100 people. There are five million telephone lines in Indonesia for a population of 200 million. In Jakarta, the fixed telephone line density now stands at 11 per 100 people.

Indonesia is currently developing telecommunications networks and infrastructure, including fiber optics, submarine cables, terrestrial gateways and satellites, for fixed telecommunications lines and cellular services.

The government has predicted that Indonesia's population in 2020 will exceed 250 million, while the number of fixed telephone lines in that year should reach at least 20 percent of the total population, while the number of mobile cellular telephone lines should be between 10 percent and 20 percent of the country's total number of telephone lines.

Compared with Japan and most countries in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Indonesia still lags in terms of telephone-line density. The figure in Indonesia is less than 1.8 per 100 people; in Singapore it is 46, Thailand, 13, and Malaysia, 6.5.

According to analysts, the government will have to work hard to reach a ratio of four fixed telephone lines for each 100 people by 1998, and 10 per 100 people by 2000 in order to reach the ratio of 20 per 100 people by 2020.

Quality is also still low and the country's dependency on imported technology and equipment is high.

Other challenges

The development of Nusantara 21 will also depend on proper regulations. Telecommunications laws, a broadcasting bill and rules on copy rights will all influence the project.

The government is currently reviewing Telecommunications Law No 3, which was issued in 1989. Analysts said that the eight-year-old law needed "refurbishment". It is not clear when the law will be amended. In the meantime, the government has passed the broadcasting bill.

The two regulations are playing important roles in the IT industry.

Suitably qualified human resources will be needed to support and maintain the project and the telecommunications industry in general.

Joop said that the world used IT in a rather narrow sense, as it referred mainly to engineering and computer specialists.

More than half of students enrolled in higher education are social sciences majors; science and technology represented 18 percent and 14 percent respectively, he said.

"The government is currently preparing a plan to develop a large number of engineering education institutions, most of them are poly-tech/diploma programs, up to 100 institutions in 2000."

According to the government, pure IT education began being offered in universities about 10 years ago. The percentage of IT students is expected to grow in the next 20 years with relative "slower" speed compared to the other engineering disciplines.

The rate of increase of students studying in computer science is about 10 percent to 15 percent per year. In 2000, the student body will have approximately doubled. (icn)

Table A: Domestic Telecommunications Service

1992 1995 1999 --------------------------------------------------------- Population (millions) 183 192 208 GDP (US$) 622 935 1,117 Lines in service (millions) 1,548 2,764 8,000 Penetration 0.83 1.42 3.84 No of pay phone (thousands) 46 90.9 240 Multimedia ISDN in broadband

major cities services

Table B: Student Enrollment in Higher Education

Field study 1995 2005 2020 --------------------------------------------------------- Engineering 70,000 21,000 500,000 Physic science 95,000 145,000 305,000 Social science 335,000 360,000 395,000 Total 500,000 715,000 1,200,000