'Innovative' approach promotes use of WiFi in RI
Leony Aurora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta
For Indonesians, the saying "where there's a will, there's a way" takes on a special meaning. Under pressure, their minds click creatively, finding nooks, crannies, bypasses and loopholes to attain objectives when the normal path is strewn with stumbling blocks.
From such conditions, unusual practices and procedures emerge -- some improper, but others quite inventive. The development in the use of Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) technology in Indonesia is an example of a little bit of both.
Although the use of WiFi to surf the Internet using "hotspots" at hip cafes has yet to gain great popularity, the technology scores big time in other places.
"In Indonesia, WiFi is not only used as an access network by Internet service providers (ISPs) to reach customers' houses, but also as a backbone network to haul Internet traffic over large distances," said director of organizational development and projects of LIRNEasia, Divakar Goswami, recently.
"This situation is unique because in most countries, ISPs use wired options to reach customers and lease backbone networks from telecom operators," he said, adding that at least 37 cities from Medan to Jayapura had been cataloged as utilizing WiFi as a backbone or access network.
Goswami and information and communication technology (ICT) expert Onno Purbo, under LIRNEasia -- a regional ICT policy and regulation capacity building organization -- conducted a study on WiFi and Internet networks in Indonesia this August.
WiFi is a broadband networking technology that allows people to connect various peripherals and share an Internet connection using the airwaves. Using transceivers operating at a frequency of 2.4 gigahertz (GHz) -- recently unlicensed by the government -- WiFi has the ability to transfer data at up to 11 megabits per second (Mbps) within a radius of 50 meters, and extendible to 15 kilometers.
Internet users in other countries use the technology merely to stay online anywhere within a small specified area, called a hotspot, without the hassle of using cables, but are connected to their ISPs through reliable high-speed cable.
In Indonesia, said Goswami, many ISPs used WiFi at the 5.8 GHz frequency, suitable for long range communications of up to a 60- km radius, to connect customers to cyberspace -- a free but illegal practice, as the government has yet to liberate the frequency.
"One reason for this 'innovative' use of WiFi in Indonesia is the high annual leased-line fees charged by Telkom or Indosat," said Goswami. According to the study, most of the 174 licensed ISPs, in addition to some 50 unlicensed ISPs, use WiFi to avoid paying high prices.
The annual domestic leased-line cost for a 2-kilometer link with a capacity of 2 Mbps here, for example, was US$18,000, almost four times the $4,802 applied on average in Europe, and a whopping 48 times more costly than the $376 applied in India.
The annual fee for an international link from Indosat of $108,528, according to the study, is almost triple the $36,868 charged in Denmark and quadruple the $29,555 in India.
Expensive leased-lines translate to high retail prices for customers. To recoup the costs, a customer -- a school, office, or neighborhood -- can sublet the connection further to other customers, which then share the already-limited connection.
"Many people make use of it, as it is cheap (as compared to leased-lines)," said Michael S. Sunggiardi from the Indonesian Wireless Local Area Network and Internet Association.
As a result, he said, there can be much interference to connections, especially as the technology uses radio signals that can be influenced by weather conditions and other disturbances.
"WiFi, however, plays a big role in advancing the Internet network in Indonesia as an alternative (medium)," added Michael, who also runs an ISP in Bogor.