The CyberCafe n TeleCenters In Twilight Zone

Onno W. Purbo

A posting dated 30 January 2004 20:25 PST by Heru Nugroho (hn@apjii.or.id), the secretary general of Indonesian Internet Association APJII http://www.apjii.or.id, to several major Indonesian mailing lists, such as, genetika@groups.or.id, telematika@yahoogroups.com, with subject: stop press: pengguna internet di Indonesia (stop press: Indonesian internet users).

It creates a wave of shock to many. Heru Nugroho reveals some insides of the latest, up to 2003, Indonesian Internet users statistics. The most shocking news is the dramatic reduction of Cybercafe’s based Internet users at a little bit less than 3% (about 200,000 users) from the conservative estimated of total Indonesian Internet users in the range of 8 million users.

Two years ago, Indonesian cyber cafés were the major media to access the Internet and served 42% from about an estimated of two (2) million Indonesian Internet users at that time. The estimated total cyber cafes in 2003 are only 1724 much less than last year and previous year.

Note that there are many categories of Internet users. Some of them are big corporate, SMEs, cybercafe, formal & informal education, including pesantren and madrasah the traditional Islamic school, and individual users.

On Friday, 12 March 2004 1:50am Michael Sunggiardi (Michael@sunggiardi.com) posted a comment on mailing list telematika@yahoogroups.com. He shared his experiences in serving the Internet access in his city Bogor, about one hour from Jakarta. In 1998, there were 129 cybercafes in Bogor. In  2003, there were only 40 cybercafes with only 20 in healthy and alive condition. The last survey, in early 2004, the condition is even worst.

In various discussions in the mailing lists, it is clear that major blame goes to the high telecommunication tariff, shift in some cybercafes core business into game center, and many illegal duties imposed by local government institutions. Some local government even asks for licensed requirement as entertainment center for running a cyber cafés.

An interesting note posted by Heru Nugroho dated 31 January 2004, indicate that there are more than 5000 educational institutions, including schools, universities, pesantren, madrasah, informal education institutions, are connected to the Internet. The education segment contributes more than 32% of the estimated total Internet users. It is a significant increased from 4% in 2001.

It is clear that educational sector would be the most strategic sector to increase the Internet users in a country. Furthermore, the whole process may be self-finance as it may cost as little as US 50 cent / month / students to get such access and return of investment in 1-2 years.

Unfortunately, such movement, create a low-down effect to cyber café businesses.