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.