IT players showed great resilience in 1999

IT players showed great resilience in 1999

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): We started 1999 off with no encouraging sign of
brighter days ahead. The unstable political situation still made
it impossible for our economy to breathe in any fresh air.
Information technology (IT), with all its e-commerce promises,
was supposed to be a cure for a quick economic recovery. But e-
commerce requires investment, and most investors were hesitant.

The hesitance was not unfounded. Although there was no mass
destruction of computer stores or communication facilities in
major cities in Indonesia throughout 1999, the political unrest
did affect the IT business.

The Jakarta Computer Expo '99, for example, lost two days of
business because of heated street demonstrations on streets
leading to the Jakarta Convention Center where the exhibition was
held.

Nonetheless, vendors kept introducing their new hardware and
software products into the Indonesian market. Intel introduced
Pentium III to Indonesian computer users very early in the year.
At first, a lot of people were skeptical that this high-
performance processor would ever find any buyer in Indonesia,
given the crippled business environment.

Surprisingly, by the end of the third quarter, Intel reported
that the Pentium III processors were selling very well. Can you
really make any prediction for this country?

The Pentium III and Celeron processors continue to arrive in
faster and faster times. Close on the heels of the latest Pentium
III 800 MHz were the Athlon processors from Intel's archrival
AMD. Competition in other areas, including peripherals, never
slowed down. In the last quarter of the year Canon, Epson and HP
showcased their latest printers and scanners, making it more
difficult for us to make our choice.

Throughout the year no new local OEM PC manufacturer emerged,
and Mugen, Zyrex and GTC were still the only three we had. The
three main computer trade centers in Jakarta, Gajah Mada Plaza,
Mal Mangga Dua and Dusit Mangga Dua kept growing and you can even
find Kodak DC280 digital camera at a store in Dusit Mangga Dua
shopping complex.

Internet telephony was also catching on in Indonesia. Products
like IPStar and Aplio were introduced and soon became quite
popular, particularly among people who make a lot of
international calls and do not mind the audio quality that is a
little bit lower than a direct phone connection.

Internet banking was first introduced in the country by Bank
Papan, which had folded the year before. Until the end of 1999,
Bank Internasional Indonesia (BII) is the only bank that offers
this service. BCA, our largest private bank, treads more
carefully. "We want to make sure that it is really what our
customers want," said Pak Aswin Wirjadi when I interviewed him
recently.

Talking about banks and their services, the concern about the
millennium bug increased as the year moved on. The government,
busy with political jockeying, was criticized for not taking
serious action to tackle the issue. Several banks announced their
readiness by the middle of the year, and toward the end of the
year, our utilities companies began declaring their Y2K
compliance. We will see the proof of their claims in just five
days.

In case you want to know the last report of the National Y2K
Task Force, which was formed by the government in response to the
criticism, you can visit their Web site at www.y2k.go.id.
Interestingly, a lot of people are still in the dark as to what
Y2K stands for. In the computer lingo, a thousand is a kilo. A
thousand bytes is a kilobyte (actually a kilobyte is 1024 bytes).
Thus, the number 2000 becomes 2K, and now you should know why
next year is called Y2K.

Like the illusive data on the personal wealth of Indonesian
government officials, how many Internet users there are in
Indonesia at present is known to nobody. A Dutch friend once
tried to collect the data, and he got less than credible figures
from the ISPs. Even the figure given by the association of ISPs
did not seem to be valid. However, the majority of analysts
believe that the number stands at half a million at the moment.
That is still a very small population, but we already see a
couple of local e-business sites appearing, such as
Radioclick.com, Harco.co.id and Wetmarket.com.

While our neighbors Singapore and Malaysia are moving full
steam ahead with their national information infrastructure, our
Nusantara 21 project is still on the shelf. There is still no
sign of its revival. Worse, the current administration under
President Abdurrahman Wahid does not seem to place very much
importance on the development of this infrastructure.

Telecommunications, which is the most basic communication need
of today, is placed under the authority of the Ministry of
Communications, which actually, includes transportation. The good
news is that the IMF has asked Indonesia to form an independent
telecommunications authority. This may expedite true
liberalization of the industry, which is the gist of Law No. 36
1999.

Some parts of Jakarta are very lucky as Kabelvision (formerly
Indovision) will be providing cable modem services through their
cable TV network. With this service, your PC can be online 24
hours a day. Too bad, they have not reached the area where I live
yet.

The cellular phone sector is doing very well thanks to the
falling price of this device. At the last breaking of the fast
gathering I attended, people were saying that there are currently
1.8 million cell phone subscribers throughout Indonesia.

Isn't it amazing to see that after decades of operation, our
state-owned PT Telkom has been able to install about six million
fix lines while in just a couple of years our cell phone
operators have a little less than one-third of this subscriber
base? Haven't you noticed that people are now asking for your
cell phone number instead of your office or home phone numbers?

IT vendors such as Cisco Systems, Computer Associates, IBM,
Lotus, Microsoft and Oracle were actively making contributions to
the education sector. One favorite university that seems to have
signed the most memorandums of understanding or agreements on
cooperation is Bina Nusantara University. Microsoft also
cooperated with STMIK Perbanas in providing short courses in
Office and database management for those who had lost their jobs
in the hope that they would have more to offer their new
employers when the situation gets better.

None of the IT vendors seem to be interested in making an
investment in Indonesia, but the good news is that a couple of
them have decided to establish a direct presence in the country.
Hence we have PT Acer Indonesia, PT Compaq Computer Indonesia and
PT Acer Indonesia. Like other potential investors, they are still
in the "wait and see" mode before making any decision on bigger
investment projects.

Indonesia still has a very poor report card when it comes to
protection of property rights. Richard Kartawijaya said that we
still have a 92 percent software piracy rate. In fact, as
reported in this newspaper, the Indonesian government has
admitted that it has failed in its 1995 commitment that it would
implement Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights
(TRIPs) by Jan. 1, 2000.

And talking about the year 2000, we all have high hopes. May
the new year bring a brighter sun to all of us.