Telecoms society proposes new ministry

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Telecommunications Society (Mastel) proposed on Thursday the establishment of a new ministry to oversee telecommunications, broadcasting, multimedia and information technology.

The head of Mastel's organization and government affairs division, Rahardjo Tjakraningrat, said at a media conference on Friday the future development of these sectors would be more efficient and coherent if they were integrated under one ministry.

"The integration of these sectors under one ministry would help the government cut unnecessary bureaucratic chains and become more focused on the future development of these interrelated sectors," he said.

He said the new government should not delay merging these sectors into one ministry if it did not want to be left behind by the current global trend of the convergency of telecommunications, broadcasting, multimedia and information technology industries.

Mastel executive director Risa Bhinekawati said some countries had already consolidated telecommunications, multimedia, broadcasting and information technology under one ministry.

"These countries include Singapore, Australia, Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines," she said.

Currently, the telecommunications industry in Indonesia is overseen by the Ministry of Communications, broadcasting by the Ministry of Information and information technology by the Ministry of Trade and Industry.

Telecommunications was previously under the now defunct tourism, post and telecommunications ministry. The government merged telecommunications into the Ministry of Communications, formerly known as the transportation ministry, in 1998.

Rahardjo said the technical and commercial development of the telecommunications, broadcasting, multimedia and information technology sectors would in the near future be very much interrelated, so they needed to be handled more seriously and coherently under "one roof".

Indications of the convergence of these sectors in Indonesia are not obvious, but can be detected in the steady growth of the Internet, electronic commerce and other multimedia services, he said. (cst)