Broadband access not a priority

JAKARTA. The government has said that existing Internet infrastructure was ready for the implementation of e-government and there was no need to start working on expanding broadband access.

Communication and Information Minister Rudiantara said the government would work first to boost the number of applications that could provide better online public services.

Rudiantara said Wednesday that the ministry would focus on providing more applications for e-government purposes.

“We will focus more on applications. So we’re talking about smart cities, such as Bandung in West Java. So the more the merrier,” he told The Jakarta Post. “A smart city means fast public services using ICT [Information and Communication Technologies].”

He said that once the applications were ready, they could use the existing infrastructure to work. “The civil and registry directorate-general [at the Home Ministry] already has a [broadband] network that reaches the district level. That’s the pipeline right there,” he said.

Irman, the Home Ministry’s civil registration head, said that the network was set up specifically to handle civil registration. “Our network cannot be accessed through regular Internet, but it has reached district level,” he said Wednesday.

Because the infrastructure was deemed ready to handle the load projected to come from the implementation of e-government, Rudiantara said that the government would not wait for the availability of fast and universal broadband access promised under the Indonesia Broadband Plan (IBP) by 2019.

“It [the IBP and e-government] will be parallel. We can’t wait [for the IBP to be finished] before implementing e-government,” he said.

The IBP, launched in October this year, is aiming for broadband deployment with a minimum speed of 2 megabits per second (Mbps) for fixed broadband and 1 Mbps for mobile broadband to ensure people can maximize the benefits of ICT for their economic, educational, health and other activities.

The IBP also details five priority areas: e-government, e-education, e-health, e-logistics and e-procurement by 2019.

Current broadband access and use in Indonesia is clustered in several major cities due to limited access, especially in the eastern part of the country.

The Indonesian Internet Service Providers Association (APJII) reported that the total number of Internet users (both fixed and mobile) had reached about 60 million by 2012, while the Central Statistics Agency (BPS) reported that a fraction of the 58 percent of Internet users were connected via their mobile phones.

While more and more Indonesians gain access to broadband Internet through their cell phones, the slow broadband speed has prevented Internet users from optimally benefiting from the Internet.

Recent speed data obtained from speedtest.net/ookla ranks Indonesia as being among the slowest broadband countries in Asia and in ASEAN.

ICT expert Tony Dwi Susanto said that while applications were important as the tool that carried services to the public, the government could not simply downplay the importance of high speed and universal broadband access as the backbone of e-government.

“So broadband is like a toll road. We have to design what it will be like. Then the applications are like trucks carrying sand, which is information,” said Tony, who headed the department for e-government research at Surabaya’s Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology (ITS), on Wednesday.

Therefore, Tony urged the government to boost the quality and quantity of broadband access in the country. He also expressed doubt about the Home Ministry’s claim that its network was accessible at the district level.

“From what I have seen in the Surabaya administration, they don’t have direct connection. They still use public Internet access, which is Speedy,” said Tony, referring to the Internet service provided by telecommunications firm PT Telkom. (Hans Nicholas Jong)