20 Million Indonesians on the Internet by 2004?

Onno W. Purbo

Is it only a hype or reality? At the moment, an estimated of 1.5 million Indonesians on the Internet with 130+ ISP licenses issued by the government. All IT & cyber activities are supported by 2+ million PCs with approximately 10 million telephone lines in Indonesia. To make it more difficult, only 3-4 million Indonesians received their higher education degree that render the Indonesian ability to play a major role in cyberspace. Thus, it would be a real challenge to hook 20 million Indonesians into the Internet especially with minimal support from the World Bank & IMF.

Behind the formal activities performed by the government, an underground movement is currently underway to integrate Indonesians into cyberspace. The total Indonesian Internet Café (WARNET) is currently 1000+ units & increasing rapidly due to massive IT educational processes & activities in terms of  roadshows, talkshows & seminars organized by many IT players. 4-5 IT seminars, workshop & talkshow per week would currently be the normal rate. Most of these young cyberpreneurs are hanging out at the Indonesian Internet Café mailing list at asosiasi-warnet@egroups.com that hosts the daily discussion of its 800+ members. Thus, it is not too surprising to know that 60-70% of Indonesian Internet access is done thru these WARNETs as reported by Mark Plus in SWA Magazine in June 2000.

All of these activities are self-financed by the Indonesian WARNET & IT community with practically no support from the World Bank / IMF / ADB and formally from the Government. Thus, no mortgage & credit have to be paid by our child & grand children in building the Indonesian knowledge based society unlike the old regime.

An aggressive technological approach has to be taken by these WARNETs to overcome the well-known high telecommunication costs in Indonesia. For WARNET’s applications, it is currently a bit difficult to get phone lines especially high-speed (>128Kbps) digital dedicated lines from our Indonesian Telco company due to various reasons. Unfortunately, business cannot wait & technological solution must be sought. KabelVision and LinkNet have taken an extra ordinary step by installing Internet into their cable TV infrastructure. An ordinary person can access Internet at approx. Rp. 330.000 / month 24 hour, which is a good deal for most of us. Some WARNETs have the luxury to be able to access this cable TV infrastructure. Some months ago, LinkNet offers to put their cable if the WARNETs community can organize a certain number of WARNETs to be connected. Cable TV seems to be the most preferred infrastructure for broadband network. Unfortunately, most of their infrastructures are currently located only in Jakarta, Surabaya & couple of big cities. High-speed wireless & satellite technology merge with PC based technology seems to be the consensus adopted.

Several satellite providers such as Melesat (infokom.net), PalapaNet (Satelindo) and TurboNet (Telkom) are adopting one (1) way high-speed (approx. 1.5Mbps) satellite access fairly similar Direct Video Broadcasting (DVB) via satellite. These Indonesian companies must compete with their International competitors in providing DVB service as satellite footprint doesn’t recognize national border. A landing right from Ministry of Transportation is the only permit needed by the International operator’s prior to providing the service.

Connected to a US$100 receive only parabolic antenna, a low cost DVB card on PC can be used to capture the broadcasted 1.5Mbps data transmitted via the Satellite mostly on C Band (4-6GHz). The DVB card will cost US$200-300 each. Major difficulty in adopting the DVB technology is in getting our request up to the ISP. Most of these services are using the ordinary phone channel (33.6Kbps) to transmit data into the Internet. TurboNet is experimenting with possible use of 9600bps packet radio technology to transmit the data to the Internet. Unfortunately, either too expensive or too slow on the transmit (uplink) channel.

To overcome the low speed transmit channel via an ordinary phone line, ISPs such as PesatNet (Pacific Satellite Nusantara) and Rainbow2u.com are now offering two (2) way satellite link. These ISPs are currently using high bandwidth (512Kbps-1.5Mbps) in downlink  traffic and (64-384Kbps) in uplink traffic. Thus, it is much faster than an ordinary phone line. PesatNet is using either a Single Channel Per Carrier (SCPC) technology or its advance version of it. While rainbow2u.com is using a DVB based technology similar to the three (3) earlier ISP mentioned for its downlink channel on the L-band Telkom-1 satellite. Rainbow2u.com is using 384Kbps SCPC transmission for its uplink channel via the satellite.

In the upcoming years, these ISPs both the one way satellite as well as the two way satellite services are planning to open their satellite transponder for more bandwidth (> 5Mbps). In heavy traffic, such as in WARNET, we are currently looking at approx. US$5000-6000 / month for full 1.5Mbps access. Some sort of bandwidth sharing scheme must be implemented to lower the access cost.

A community of 15-30 WARNETs in several cities are currently working to share the satellite bandwidth. A good example is the WARNET Cooperative in Bandung lead by Kang Aday located at awaba@egroups.com. Other cities, such as, Jogyakarta (warnetyogya@egroups.com), Malang & Surabaya are the next WARNET communities working on bandwidth sharing scheme, which in the end builds their own wireless network without having to rely on the slow Telco cables. Most WARNETs prefer to use Wireless LAN IEE 802.11 technology for sharing the bandwidth. These wireless LAN IEEE 802.11 equipment normally based on PCMCIA card can run at least 2Mbps topped at 11Mbps while the latest version will be released next year will run at 50+ Mbps much faster than the technology offered by the Telco. To lower the cost, most of us are using PC based router equipment running a FreeBSD / Linux operating system. A parabolic antenna on 2.4GHz is used to extend the distance coverage up to 7-10 km between WARNETs. Thus, conceptually these WARNETs are building their own high speed metropolitan area network (MAN).

An investment of approx. Rp. 20 million per MicrowaveLAN 2-11Mbps pair with additional approx. Rp. 2 million / year for getting the permission to use the frequency is basically the cost needed to run such high speed microwave system. These WARNETs practically pays approx. Rp. 1.5-2 million / month for getting these 2-11Mbps dedicated lines. It is much cheaper than renting xDSL technology from our Telco that costs Rp. 10 million a month (Rp. 120 million / year) for a dedicated 2Mbps line. Having the ability to build low cost high speed MAN, it is currently well known among WARNET communities - Bandung as the sea of MicrowaveLAN - with 50+ WARNETs connected at 2-11Mbps. Not to mentioned the breakthrough by Pointer WARNET in Bandung, namely, the Indonesian first & only mobile WARNET on VW Combi at 2Mbps.

Having 200-300 member / WARNET is normal. Thus, if carefully implemented these WARNET may offer a flat rate Rp. 20-40.000 / month / person for full service Internet access including the notorious Internet Telephony (VoIP). Can we imagine? Rp. 20-40.000 / month / person flat rate for Internet access including all long distance charges via internet telephony?

In high density cyber community, such as, schools & universities, the access rate can be pinned down to about Rp. 5000 / month / student. Using IntraNet & WARNET technology, several universities, such as, University of Parahyangan (UNPAR) Bandung, charge their students approx. Rp. 5000 / month / student for unlimited Internet access. At SMKN 1 (a vocational school) in Ciamis, the students only pay Rp. 1000 / month / student for their e-mail access. Thus, Internet is affordable especially at most Indonesian educational institutions.

Based on today’s condition, there is 150.000 WARTELs with potentially 3-6 million e-mail users; 1000+ WARNETs with potentially 200-400.000 users; 1300 higher education institutions with potentially 3-5 million users; 4000 vocational schools with potentially 3-4 million users and 10.000 high schools with 5-7 million potential users. Thus, 20 million Indonesian Internet users is a really in most dense community as well as affordable for most Indonesian. Technological education process would be the key.