[LINK] Indonesia Overtaking Australia with Wireless Internet

[Tom Worthington]

Greetings from the famous room N101 at the at the Australian National 
University, where Dr Idris Sulaiman is speaking on "ICT-enablement in 
Environmental Social Movements in Indonesia": 
<http://cecs.anu.edu.au/seminars/more/SID/2879>.

He is describing the social changes that the Internet and social media 
are having in Indonesia. Facebook's second largest number of users are 
in Indonesia (after the USA). The rapid increase in urban Indonesia is 
causing problems with traffic but also providing benefits. There is an 
increase in fixed line telephones, but what is most interesting is the 
rapid rise in mobile phone use, to the point where it now exceeds that 
of developed nations.

The Mig33 social network has 45M users in Indonesia and is unusual in 
being a subscription based service, contrary to the conventional wisdom, 
which says few will pay and even fewer in a developing nation: 
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mig33>.

Facebook, Twitter and Mobile applications are being used by official 
Indonesian government agencies and also by NGOs for politics and 
fighting corruption. This has popularised the use of the technology in 
the public's mind.

There is strong competition for mobile phone call time in Indonesia, 
with this competition now driving down data charges as well. There are 
"office-in-a-box" products being offered and 4G wireless.

Dr Sulaiman described the work of NGOs working wireless technology to 
help local people be heard on environmental issues, including Telapak: 
<http://www.telapak.org/>.

Dr Sulaiman describes Indonesia as a 'near-networked' nation. He argues 
that argues that ICT-enablement is now having a significant effect and 
that such developing nations with smart phones are bypassing development 
steps of western nations. The use of smart phones in Jakarta now exceeds 
that of Sydney. With more applications becoming available for smart 
phones and tablet computers, this may see developing nations in a better 
position to exploit the technology and take the lead globally in the 
information economy.

This has significant implications for Australia, which has invested $43B 
in a nationalised fibre optic National Broadband Network. It may be that 
Indoenisa's free market wireless approach turns out to have been the 
better option. If most consumers and small businesses access the 
Internet via a hand held wireless device, then the rationale for the NBN 
evaporates. However, as Dr Sulaiman  pointed out the wireless has 
capacity limitations and in Indonesia (and Australia to a lesser extent) 
  latency and daily peak period cause problems. But these are likely to 
be acceptable for casual personal use but not for business.

More in my blog at: 
<http://blog.tomw.net.au/2011/06/mobile-technology-leap-in-developing.html>.


-- 
Tom Worthington FACS CP HLM, TomW Communications Pty Ltd. t: 0419496150
PO Box 13, Belconnen ACT 2617, Australia  http://www.tomw.net.au
Adjunct Senior Lecturer, School of Computer Science, The
Australian National University http://cs.anu.edu.au/courses/COMP7310/
Visiting Scientist, CSIRO ICT Centre: http://bit.ly/csiro_ict_canberra