News and Opportunities

Telkom Outstrips Two Major Rivals Opportunities in Internet Service Providers Getting Smaller

JAKARTA: The tender for Sub-District Internet Service Provider (PLIK) allotting IDR900 billion is only able to qualify some big operators.
Gatot S. Dewa Broto, Head of the Information and Public Relations Center at the Ministry of Communication and Informatics, revealed several participants would be invited into the opening of tender document on February 1, 2010 (today).
"With such a composition, no repeat tender is needed like the ringing village USO program recently," he informed yesterday.
From the very onset, the Ministry has called PLIK the Smart Village program.
The press release of the Ministry of Communication and Informatics dated September 30, 2009, for example, is titled "Press Release No. 192/PIH/KOMINFO/9/2009 on USO Pre-qualification Announcement for Internet Access Providers for Smart Villages after a Smashing Success in the Tender for the Ringing Village USO program."
The Ministry of Communication and Informatics decides to change the program name into PLIK to avoid confusion with the 100 Internet Villages program launched by Minister of Communication and Informatics Tifatul Sembiring for his 100-day program.
The PLIK program from the very beginning is indeed not designed to be included in the ministry's 100-day program.
Santoso Serad, Head of the Rural Internet Telecommunication Agency at the Ministry of Communication and Informatics, explained the disqualification of Posindo and Netwave was attributable to their mistakes in confusing telecommunication service rights fee with USO service rights fee.
"From the start, the tender committee has reminded that participants can fail the tender because of trivial problems," he told Bisnis yesterday.
The disqualification of the two companies makes Telkom the only contestant left to eye the entire 11 PLIK project packages.
Opportunities for Internet Service Providers
Eddy Kurnia, Vice President Public and Marketing Communication of publicly listed PT Telkom, disclosed the company would focus on the tender process. "We will always be ready to provide telecommunication facilities, even on sub-district level," he told Bisnis.
John Sihar Simanjuntak, Chief Executive Officer of PT Indo Pratama Cybernet (IPNet), viewed the tender process was too rigid. "We fail for a trivial reason of small mistake in our administrative document [which we have actually revised]," he said to Bisnis.
John argued the tender predictably would go to big operator despite emphasis on Internet service providers during the socialization.
"However, the regulation allows big operators to control regions, leading to domination [without involving Internet service providers]," he said. (Bisnis/roy/api)

http://www.bisnis.com/pls/bisnis/bisnis.cetak?inw_id=716413

[Last update: 2010-02-01 10:45:36]