Proactive planning needed to develope telecommunications

By Zatni Arbi

JAKARTA (JP): My article on wired versus wireline telephones last week seems to have attracted a few responses. Unfortunately, when people were calling me over that article, I happened to be away in Bandung to attend the opening of the annual Techno Pre- Eminent (TPE) Conference 98 held by RisTI, a research division of PT Telkom. I am still waiting for the readers to call me again. My friend Osvaldo Coelho was luckier, as he gave a long comment on my past article in this papers "Letters" column (Wednesday, Oct. 7), and successfully got his message across to me.

Mr. Coelho was right when he said that I was not saying anything new when I asserted that the wireless would take over the place of the wireline -- or landline -- telephones. But, he seems to have forgotten that I was not writing the article for telecom consultants. I was writing for the rest of my readers who may still think that the monstrous telephone webs over our heads are the only way to get telephone services into our houses. I guess it shouldn't be too difficult to see that many people -- even some in our own telecom authority -- were still unaware of the trend of going wireless.

Mr. Coelho was also correct when he contended that GSM is by far the most widely used technology for cellular phones today. With 71 million subscribers in Europe alone by 1997, that may not change in the near future. Yet, who wants to stay in first gear all the time? If you have read the latest reports in reputable magazines such as Tele.com, Business Week and Fortune, you will also understand why CDMA is going to be the preferred choice worldwide. The GSM technology is fine, but it has its limitation. To overcome the limitations, people are now talking about third generation cellular technology, which is still being negotiated.

In addition to the benefits of the CDMA that I mentioned in my last article, it has also been stated that GSM cannot handle data communications as flawlessly as CDMA. In a GSM network, the hand- over, which takes place as you leave a cell and enter another, usually results in a break that hampers data transmission. In a CDMA network, the handover happens more gradually and the link is not affected when transferred from one base station to another. While wireless phones are mainly used for voice communications, the use of mobile data devices is also gaining momentum.

While, as Mr. Coelho has said, we should not embrace new technologies simply because they are more appealing, we should not let ourselves be stuck in old technologies just because the operators have made huge investments on them. We are all familiar with the term "leapfrogging". The essence here is that we should leapfrog proactively.

Indeed, the thrust of my article of last week was actually on how our telecom authorities and operators need to be more proactive as they plan and develop our telecom infrastructure. Just coincidentally, while in Bandung last week I had another experience that once again demonstrates how this ability to plan proactively sometimes runs short.

During the press conference that launched the project with HP and Microsoft, officials at RisTI explained to the journalists that it was making a serious effort in spearheading e-commerce in Indonesia. One of the programs that they had focused on the construction of an e-commerce Web site called RisTI Shop. "This Web site will be an electronic marketplace where sellers and buyers can meet and do business," the journalists were told.

E-commerce is unmistakably the current vogue, and we have already had a lot of discussion on how it has become a fact of life today. Therefore, when I learned that RisTI was leading the way to the new e-world, I got very excited myself. I raised a couple of very basic questions: "Suppose I am interested in opening a storefront in RisTI Shop, what should I do? How would you charge me? Am I going to have to pay a monthly fee, or are you going to just take a certain percentage of the transaction that I generate through my storefront?" To my surprise, the answer I received was that these things had not been given any thought yet.

Now, if one is serious about developing an e-commerce web site, shouldn't the business strategies be the first things thought through? Shouldn't one start with, for example, how to generate income from the venture?

The failure to think and plan for a longer range was an example of what I would call lack of proactive planning from our telecom authority. The project has very strong backing from Microsoft and HP, and the investment is not negligible. HP, for instance, has committed two servers and five clients for the project. It would be a pity if such an investment is used just to learn how to design snazzy Web sites.

The need to plan proactively becomes even more necessary as competition becomes more unavoidable. Technologies do compete with each other, and the new ones are almost always better than the old ones, at least so for the customers. Our cable TV network is a case in point. Indovision, our cable TV provider, has been quietly but steadily expanding its networks that inject signals of more than 40 TV stations through physical cables to residences in Jakarta. Unknown to many of us, it will bring data communication through those coaxial cables to the homes as well, most probably starting early next year. When this happens, we will have even less need for the fixed overland phone cables that are not very likely to give us connection speeds beyond 56 Kbps. Just compare that to the 30 Mbps downstream speed of the cable connection.

So, a lot is happening in the information and communication technologies than we may know, and it will be a real pity if we fail to plan proactively. Moreover, it will be a real shame if we choose to limit ourselves to the very noisy and highly polluting bajaj motorized pedicabs while the BMW C1 is now available.