YLKI strongly protests phone tariff increase

YLKI strongly protests phone tariff increase

JAKARTA (JP): The Indonesian Consumers Foundation (YLKI) has
strongly protested the government's decision to raise local and
intercity telephone rates from yesterday.

The consumer protection foundation's vice chairman, Agus
Pambagio, charged that the decision was based on certain parties'
commercial interests and did not take the rising burden on
consumers into account.

"The increase is unfair, because tariffs were increased in
January and people are still suffering from the prolonged
monetary crisis," Agus said, as quoted by Antara.

The Ministry of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications announced
the decision to increase local phone rates by 10 percent for
household subscribers and a maximum of 15 percent for business
subscribers last month.

The government argued the increase was unavoidable if the
publicly-listed PT Telkom was to remain in a healthy financial
condition. The government also said that telephone rates here
were among the lowest in the world.

PT Telkom holds a monopoly on domestic telephone services.

On Jan. 1, the government increased the local rate by 8.7
percent to Rp 125 per pulse, but cut intercity calls by 10.2
percent to Rp 97 per pulse. One pulse occurs every 1.5, two or
three minutes, depending on the distance over which a phone call
is made.

Agus acknowledged the steep depreciation of the rupiah against
the U.S. dollar had also significantly reduced the real value of
the tariff.

"However, the government is expected not to use the
depreciation to justify the increases because people are
currently troubled by sharply rising prices," Agus said.

Publicly-listed PT Indosat and PT Satelindo both raised
international tariffs to 204 countries by 25 percent last month.

Agus said the government invited the foundation to attend a
meeting to discuss the planned increase last month.

"We were ostensibly invited to give inputs, but in fact were
simply asked to approve the decision," Agus said. (prb)