ACTION
        Full Internet access for all educational and research institutions.

TYPE OF ACTION
It is a real implementation program which is currently partly being underway. We in the past year, we have been promoting this at all Indonesian universities.

Encourage institutions to participate / contribute to insure sustainablility of the program. However, seeds funding from World Bank / ADB/ OECF is required especially for awareness and building the needed human resource and setup the Network Operation Centers.

EXPLAIN YOUR ANSWER
Internet is an abundant source of information and knowledge needed & crucial for rapid human resource development in Indonesia. Thus, Internet is very beneficial for  education and research communities provided it is approriately used.

Internet access is NOT at all expensive! it is very low cost. A 64Kbps VSAT TDMA satellite link can be rented at US$2500 / month. For a university with 10,000 students (which is very typicall in Indonesia), it costs only Rp. 500 (US$ 0.25) / month / student. It is very low cost and affordable even for remote universities in Irian.

ITB will actively participate in Asian Internet Interconnection Initiative (AI3) at a speed of 2Mbps. It is ITB committment to provide a low cost (read free) Internet access for all education & research institutions in Indonesia. Letter of intention regarding this has been sent by the Rector of ITB to the Minister of Tourism Post & Telecommunications.

OBJECTIVE
Our vision is to integrate all Indonesian education & research institutions to Internet.

For about 50 state universities and more than 1000 higher education institutions with estimated of 3-4 million students are expected to participate. It is a significant break through even for global Internet community!

An alternative low cost Internet gateway may be the ITB's AI3 2Mbps Internet gateway which is imbedded in the experimental Asia Pacific Satellite Backbone as part of Asia Pacific Information Infrastructure.

BENEFITS
All Indonesian education and research institutions will directly benefit from the action plan.

All major national backbone carrier will benefit to carry the data from Internet gateway to remote destination in Indonesia as it is not a free ride rather the educational institutions pay the cost.

Having increase the knowledge through Information Technology, there is no question that later, in the years to come all Indonesian businesses & industries will benefit from it.

	Segment Education (private & government institutions)
	Segment Research (in education and industries).
	Segment National Backbone Providers
		(e.g., PT. CSM, PT. Telkom, PT. Lintas Arta).
	Segment IT industries & suppliers.

JUSTIFICATION
Human Resource is the key aspect to compete in global era. Lacking of talented human resources in Indonesia has proven to be very fragile for Indonesian economy to compete in global market.

The proposed action plan is not at all a free ride to Internet for all education and research institutions as they have to pay the long distance satellite link to the Internet gateway. Thus, it is basically a sustainable scheme of action which benefit to all major data backbone carrier and IT industries in Indonesia.

ITB in AI3 experimental 2Mbps scheme will have 1-2 year free Internet access. This free access can be used for building the information communities / users within universities and research institutes needed to justify the building of any campus / institution Wide Area Network to reduce the cost of Internet.

OBSTACLES
Lack of Internet capable human resource specially in remote areas in Indonesia. Training is one alternative, unfortunately, most of the trained people will likely to find themselves ended-up in other promising job outside their universities.

Student should be involved in the operation of Internet access as students are very keen and fast learner as compare to the older operators. In addition, students is basically a low cost labour & highly trainable people. Unfortunately, not all university leaders realize this capacity. Some will keep the Internet access only for certain number of people within the university. This is not a favourable action for the plan.

The current effective strategy is to do continual training for operators and incorporating the students in the process of maintaining and operating the systems.This process should be funded by seed funding from World Bank / ADB / OECF. Failing to enable the students to participate in the operation of system will result-in of the termination of the Internet access.

REQUIREMENTS
ITB will have a 2Mbps Internet link as part of the Asian Internet Interconnection Initiative (AI3). It is the major Internet gateway and committed to support education and research institutions in Indonesia. A free Internet access for the next 1-2 year is provided for the education and research communities.

Major data backbone providers to connect any remote education and research institutions are already in operation a cost of US$2500 / month for VSAT TDMA 64Kbps is not expensive for all Indonesian universities especially if they can share the cost with its surroundings.

We will most likely find several Novell LANs in most institutions. It is sufficient to be used for initial Internet access. At least to build the culture and information society within the institutions.

Only seeds funding from World Bank / ADB / OECF is required to build the initial human resources and network operation center at the gateway as well as some institutions.

	The one who can bring such project forward, should be:
•	the technological leader in Internet technology.
•	strong relationship with educational institutions.
•	knows exactly the local leaders within the institutions.
•	capable to initiate bottom-up activities in building the information society. A strong motivator would be needed.

EXECUTION
Our experience indicates that there are two paths should be used in implementing such action:

Bottom-up community based development. It is the most crucial in building the information society to justify the need and further funding. Depending on the local leadership, it may require 1-2 year time to build such communities. While building the communities, a very low cost Internet access is required - it should be a full Internet access. At least E-mail access is required. However, a massive awareness program should be implemented.

Top down approach. Talking to the the official local leaders in the institutions to justify the funding needed for:
		- building campus WAN.
		- Internet access.
		- training the staffs & students.

	Only three institutions in Indonesia have the capacity in performing such action:

	IPTEK-NET at BPPT.

	Institute of Technology in Bandung (ITB).
(expertise in implementing community based bottom-up development approch as well as Internet technology capable).

University of Indonesia
(maintaining the Top Level Domain ID as well as the second level domain for universities. Expertise in computer based learning).

Between the three, only ITB has the experience in actually implementing a successful bottom-up community-based development approach in its campus to build the information communities for the last three years.

SUPPORTING DATA
We think Rp 100-500 (US$ 0.25) / month / student for full 24 hour Internet access is a strong justified reason for the implementation of the action plan.

	A copy of the paper
Soegiardjo Soegijoko, Onno W. Purbo, Widiadnyana Merati, Priyono Sutikno, Intan Achmad, "Computer Network in Indonesia: Current Status and Recommendation for its developments," Asia Pacific Networking Group Meeting, Singapore,  January 1996.