Mastel condemns govt for violating ruling on VoIP

A'an Suryana, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The Telecommunications and Information Society (Mastel) criticized the government on Tuesday for only allowing five companies to run the lucrative Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) business, saying that it was a gross violation of the government's own regulation.

Having appointed the five companies, the government has forced other existing operators to either join the five or to shut down their operations, a move that clearly has crushed free and fair market competition.

Nies Purwati, the secretary-general of Mastel, said that the Ministry of Communications was not transparent in its move, and it was a clear violation of Government Decree No. 52/2000.

"The government should provide equal opportunities to all operators to run the VoIP business, as mandated by the decree," Nies told The Jakarta Post.

The appointment of the five VoIP operators was made last year, leaving the operations of 12 other existing VoIP operators in limbo.

The government has reiterated several times that the 12 operators were free riders on the VoIP business, that they had used the facilities of state-owned telecommunications firm PT Telkom and had caused losses to the state.

Back to the unfair appointment of the five companies, Mastel said that it had no problems with the three operators namely PT Telkom, PT Indosat and PT Satelindo, saying that they had a proven track record in the telecommunications industry.

However, the inclusion of the two remaining private firms in the government scheme, namely PT Atlassat Solusindo and PT Gaharu Sejahtera was questioned as the credibility of the two companies was dubious.

"The two are new players in the VoIP business," said Nies.

In a bid to seek justice, Mastel and the operators have solicited support from the consenting authorities, including the House of Representatives (DPR) and the Business Competition Supervisory Commission (KPPU).

Nies claimed that the legislators had pledged to grill the government over the matter. While, the KPPU is set to establish a team to investigate the case, said Nies.

The team will be formed on Thursday, said KPPU commissioner Mohammad Iqbal."The duty of the team is to investigate whether there is unfair business practice in the case," Iqbal told the Post.