Ministry of Communications explains to Constitutional Court why unused internet quotas cannot be rolled over
Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Ministry of Communications and Digital (Komdigi) has explained why unused or expired internet quotas cannot be extended to the next active period or rolled over.
Director General of Digital Infrastructure at Komdigi, Wayan Toni Supriyanto, speaking at a continued judicial review hearing on the Job Creation Law at the Constitutional Court on Wednesday, said that internet quota rollover could potentially impose additional burdens and costs on operators.
“The obligation to roll over or refund generally has the potential to create unmeasurable capacity burdens and additional costs for communications providers,” he said whilst delivering the government’s statement on the case concerning expired quotas.
Such conditions, he added, could impact tariff adjustments, reduce the variety of affordable packages, diminish service quality due to network congestion, and disrupt network capacity planning.
According to Komdigi, the demand for internet quotas to remain valid in line with the SIM card’s active period or to be valid indefinitely would in fact create legal uncertainty and an imbalance of obligations for operators or communications providers.
“Because there would be no clear limit regarding the end of the responsibility for service provision,” he said.
He explained that service quotas form part of network capacity, which is dynamic and limited in nature and must therefore be managed efficiently and in a planned manner. Consequently, the implementation of quota validity periods is not without reason.
According to Komdigi, there are at least four functions served by implementing quota validity periods: maintaining efficient network utilisation, preventing the accumulation of phantom capacity, providing investment planning certainty, and maintaining public service quality.
“If quotas were treated as rights without time limits, this could potentially create uncertainty in network management, increase operational costs, and reduce service quality, which would ultimately harm the broader public,” he said.
For these reasons, Komdigi stated that the regulation of quota validity periods constitutes a rational and proportionate economic policy.
The government further assessed that the arguments put forward by the applicants in the judicial review petition are legally unfounded, and therefore requested the Court to reject the petition in its entirety.
In case number 273/PUU-XXIII/2025, ride-hailing driver Didi Supandi and online food vendor Wahyu Triana Sari are challenging Article 71 point 2 of Law Number 6 of 2023 on Job Creation.
The article, which amends Article 28 of Law Number 36 of 1999 on Telecommunications, governs telecommunications service tariffs.
The applicants fundamentally take issue with the system whereby unused internet quotas are forfeited upon expiry of the quota’s active period by telecommunications service providers or operators.
Legal counsel for the applicants, Viktor Santoso Tandiasa, said the article contains norms that are open to multiple interpretations and lack limiting parameters, thereby granting operators absolute freedom to conflate service tariffs with ownership duration.
“This creates legal uncertainty for telecommunications service users as consumers, because they never know precisely why a data commodity that has been paid for in full can simply disappear due to a time variable determined unilaterally,” Viktor said at the initial hearing on Tuesday (13 January).
Article 71 point 2 of the Job Creation Law was also deemed to create injustice. The applicants argued that the article allows operators as telecommunications service providers to receive full upfront payment whilst the rights of users or consumers can be forcibly terminated.
On this basis, the applicants have requested the Constitutional Court to declare Article 71 point 2 of the Job Creation Law conditionally unconstitutional unless it is interpreted to mean: The determination of tariffs and telecommunications service provision schemes must guarantee the accumulation of remaining data quotas (data rollover) that have been paid for by consumers.