Opening IT market

Opening IT market

The article in the Sept. 30 issue of The Jakarta Post,
Indonesia is badly in need of broad based IT connectivity, is
correct.

The underlying reason is simple: The country has, effectively,
only two lazy monopolistic Information Technology providers:
Telkom and Indosat. They behave rationally and in their own
interests: They provide poor services for high prices. They do
everything in their power to keep smaller, more efficient IT
bandwidth providers out of the market.

The solution is easy: Open up Indonesia's IT bandwidth
provider market, and the same thing will develop as did in
Indonesia's civil aviation and mobile phone industries -- the
quality of service will improve and prices will drop.

The same needs to be done with the state power sector.

EVAN JONES, Batam