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