Police defend prepaid card raids

Police defend prepaid card raids

JAKARTA: The police have justified their raids on prepaid
telephone calling card operators and Internet service providers,
saying that most of them have misused their licenses.

Chief of police detectives for special crimes Adj. Sr. Comr.
Ike Edwin said here on Tuesday that the legal privately owned
companies, whic also offer post-paid cards, were only allowed to
use the Telkom cloud network, which had been provided by state
telecommunications operator PT Telkom.

"But in practice, they use the Internet Protocol Cloud
network. They've often engaged in such practices," he said,
adding that the Internet Protocol Cloud is an illegal voiceover
Internet protocol (VoIP).

He said that the companies used the illegal facilities to cut
their prices so that they could sell their services more cheaply
compared with those approved by Telkom.

But the practice violates article 11 of Telecommunications
Regulation no.36/1999, which bans illegal VoIP services, he said.

Edwin said that other companies, which were operators of
network access point (NAP), also breached their license by
refusing to use Telkom connection facilities at a rate of Rp 200
per minute. But, in reality, they did not use the facility and
applied a rate of Rp 197 per minute.

According to Edwin, the practice had caused a loss of
trillions of rupiah to the country. --JP