Awaiting broadband revolution in “the hippo country”

What are the main grids that will connect houses in the future? PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom) consumer service director Dian Rachmawan has his own version of prophecy: water, electricity, and broadband.

His answer is in accordance with IBM survey report entitled ‘Telco 2015: five telling years, four future scenarios’, pointing out the importance of broadband line in the nowadays society.

Asked what they are least likely to give up if the economy worsened, after their homes, respondents listed mobile phones and broadband internet access. The items ranked ahead of family vacation, PayTV, going out, and newspapers/ magazines.

However, broadband reality in Indonesia is too far from meeting with Dian’s prophecy—and thus opening wider opportunity for a broadband expansion. From 57 million of households in Indonesia, only 3 million or 5 percent of them enjoy broadband internet.

It is not wondering, then, to find out that average internet speed in Indonesia is below Srilangka, Vietnam, and even Iraq. Oklaa, the provider or speedtes.net, illustrates Indonesia’s internet speed as a walking hippopotamus.

Oklaa (as of May 2015) reported that the average of download speed in Indonesia is at 6.73 Mbps, ranked the 139th in the world, below Sri Langka whose download speed is 6.75 Mbps and even worse than the torn-apart Iraq which recorded a 6.78 Mbps download speed.

Meanwhile, Akamai, in its latest Q3/2015 report, said that Indonesia ranks at 104 among Asia Pacific regions in terms of the average internet speed, scoring 3 Mbps. Far slower than Thailand (8.2 Mbps), Sri Langka (5.1 Mbps), and Malaysia (4.9 Mbps).

“Internet speed is closely related to the quantity of the users. The more the users, the slower the internet will be,” said Indonesia Information and Communication Technology (ICT) Institute expert Heru Sutadi to thejakartapost.com on Monday.

A slow internet speed in Indonesia, he further explained, is more likely due to the increasing number of internet users which grows faster than the development of the infrastructure.

Thus he urged the government to accelerate the implementation of ‘digital revolution’, which previously campaigned by President Joko “Jokowi” Widodo through 4G-LTE (fourth generation of long term evolution), by swiftly appoint the winner in the tender of Palapa ring project.

Palapa Ring is a broadband infrastructure project which lay out a total of 8,395 kilometers of undersea fiber optic cables, providing the backbone for Internet connections across the archipelago’s 33 provinces and 460 cities and districts. It is targeted to be completed in 2019.

“It [4G-LTE] will be nonsense without the infrastructure. The national program to provide internet in 77,000 villages is merely on the blue print, and lack of progress in the planning and implementation. We need a bigger political will from President Jokowi,” Heru said.

Fiber to the home
At the same time, he continued, the government must start a national campaign called fiber to the home (FTTH). By doing it now, the broadband end-users will be ready to connect into the grid when Palapa Ring project is finished in the next three years.

Dian said that the challenge in providing fiber optic to houses is in the home wiring. Most of Indonesian houses had yet to provide a special line for fiber optic cable, leading to higher cost in the first installment as they must drill part of the house and then clean the mess.

However, as the high-speed internet demand keeps increasing amid the revolutionary digital progress—through internet TV, video-streaming based features, and digital musics, Telkom is optimistic to boost fiber-optic based internet service to the houses.

“There are 57 million houses connected to PLN grid. We estimate 10 million of them need high-speed internet service. After successfully grab 1 million clients of IndiHOME in 2015, we’re eyeing for additional 3 million clients next year,” Dian said.

IndiHOME is the upgraded version of coaxial-cable based internet service, Speedy. The new fiber-optic based service allows Telkom to create ‘Triple play’ bundling products, namely landline phone service, high speed internet access, and online TV/video-streaming services.

In a bid to boost efficiency for customers and the company, he continued, Telkom cooperated with Indonesian electricity contractor association, aiming at the availability of broadband home wiring line in all houses during the construction.

In 2015, it converted 500.000 of Speedy users to convert their line to IndiHOME, and grabbed 500.000 new clients. “We want to Indihomize Indonesia to upgrade the human resource quality in the country, close the digital gap and create an internet-aware country,” Dian said.

Telkom is currently competing with three other providers in serving high-speed internet for the home-users. First, Firstmedia as the first provider of 100 Mbps-speed internet for household—but limited only in greater Jakarta.

Second, Biznet as the first provider of 100 Gbps-speed internet for family. And third, MNC Play who cooperates with ZTE to offer a 200 Mbps-speed internet line, eyeing for two million home clients by 2017.

However Heru said that the 3 million users of high-speed internet in Indonesia is still too low to improve the average of internet speed in the country. More efforts are needed, especially from the government by accelerating the backbone of high-speed internet service.

“We need a broadband revolution to serve high speed internet for Indonesian from the western to eastern regions immediately. There is no turning back as technology access is the key to improve the quality of human resources as AEC [Asean Economic Community] has begun,” he said.