Telkom barred from making deal with VoIP operators
Rendi A. Witular The Jakarta Post Jakarta
The government has asked state-owned telecommunications firm PT Telkom to cancel plans to establish a joint operating arrangement with 12 Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) operators, according to a senior company official.
Telkom finance director Komarudin Sastrakoesoemah told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday that the Directorate General of Posts and Telecommunications was requiring the VoIP operators to first seek government approval for any joint operating plan.
"The draft of the MoU was about to be signed last week, but there was an instruction (to cancel it) which, as the director general said, was based on Ministerial Decree No. 23/2002, which stipulates joint operating licensing procedures for the VoIP sector," said Komarudin.
The government has recently shut down 12 VoIP operators on the grounds that they lacked the necessary licenses. This raised a chorus of protest from the operators.
To resolve the problem, the government urged the 12 operators to enter into a joint operating venture with two privately owned operators, PT Gaharu Sejahtera and PT Atlassat Solusindo.
But the 12 operators want to join forces with Telkom.
Komarudin asserted that Telkom was unaware that approval from the director general of posts and telecommunications was needed for the setting up of a VoIP joint operating venture.
Indonesian Internet Service Providers Association (APJII) chairman Heru Nugroho said that the move by the government to block the joint operating arrangement only created new uncertainties in the sector.
He said that the APJII had been approached by brokers to enter into a joint operating scheme with Gaharu and Atlassat.
The two companies only recently obtained licenses to go into the VoIP business.
There have been suspicions of irregularities in the issuance of the licenses to the two firms.
Many believe that the two companies are backed up by certain powerful businessmen who run illegal discotheques.
At a discussion held by the APJII on Tuesday, the association even suggested that the two companies were behind the recent VoIP raids conducted by the Jakarta office of the Ministry of Communications.
Heru was unsure about the bona fides and credibility of the two companies as they were both new to the business, and a question mark still hung over their commitment to establishing the joint operating venture.
"We would rather collaborate with a well-established and reputable company such as Telkom. Moreover, Telkom also has a wide network coverage," said Heru.
The two other established VoIP operators are state-owned telecom firms PT Indosat and its subsidiary PT Satelindo.