World major IT companies join technology exhibition

JAKARTA (JP): The world's largest information technology companies are among the 33 corporations taking part in the Techno Pre-Eminence 1999 exhibition, which opened here on Wednesday.

Participants at the fifth annual expo include cellular telephone makers Ericsson, Siemens, Motorola and Alcatel, mobile phone operators Telkomsel and Satelindo, and other information technology-related companies like Astra Graphia and Marconi.

The latest information technology (IT) products, ranging from mobile telephones, telephone cards, multimedia and Internet systems, are on display at the exhibition which will run through Saturday at the Jakarta Convention Center.

The chairman of the expo's organizing committee, Suryatin Setiawan, said almost 1,000 people had registered to participate in a series of discussions and conferences being held during the event, which is sponsored by PT Telkom Indonesia.

"The number of participants has grown by 70 percent since the event was first held in 1995," he said.

Suryatin, who is also the director of Telkom's research and information technology division, said the increase in foreign participants was pushing Telkom to turn the event into an annual gathering for the telecommunications community in the Asia- Pacific region.

He said the event, which previously was held in Bandung, West Java, had always attracted telecommunications experts from local and overseas companies.

Minister of Communications Agum Gumelar in his opening speech read out by Director General of Post and Telecommunications Sasmito Dirdjo, said the government was committed to providing more support for the development of the telecommunications infrastructure, especially those frameworks using information technology-based applications.

"The emphasis of information infrastructure development should be placed on planning, research and innovation, while priority should be given to accessibility rather than density," he said.

He said the government's support of information technology was important to accelerate the development of the country's telecommunications sector, which was considered underdeveloped both in terms of technology used and variety of services offered.

Suryatin said the development of information technology-based telecommunications in Indonesia was hampered by numerous factors, including a lack of investment.

The prolonged economic crisis has also discouraged some local companies from investing in more advanced technologies for their products and services, he said. (cst)