Indonesia's Domestic LD Infrastructures

The majority of terrestrial LD infrastructures is currently owned and operated by 4 players i.e. Telkom, Indosat, XL and ICON+. A subsidiary of PGN - a national gas company - will also enter the market of LD network services (currently it is in the licensing process). Moratel which newly enters the business has progressively expanded its infrastructure and its service area. Moratel will operate its own international cable system, early this year.


However, as of 2006, the map of operational long distance cable infrastructures can be viewed in the above picture. It can explicitly be seen that the infrastructures’ distribution is far than even. The west part of the country is better served than the east part. This would influence both the availability and quality of communication services and the competition climate.

Long distance services via satellites are additionally offered by CSM, Lintasarta and several other (smaller) VSAT providers. However, the satellites are owned by Indosat, Telkom and PSN. It is now also (legally) possible to lease transponders from foreign satellites, as long as the satellites have a national license (landing rights).

Although their role and position is currently being replaced by the most advance optical cable system, terrestrial long distance microwave systems are still used in several places. For historical reasons, the majority of terrestrial LD microwave systems are owned and operated by Telkom. The emerging usage of microwave systems by other operators is currently identified only in the local and metro area.

Greenfoot

Last year I gave a programming lecture for a special class sent and sponsored by the government (DIKTI). I have no formal CS background, but I do programming a lot for my research. The class participants were mostly new to the programming world. So, I could not start with an applied programming lecture without mentioning some basic programming principles first.

Then, I was looking for an appropriate didactical tool and found BlueJ. It is a nice tool for learning object-oriented programming (OOP) using Java language. The interface is quite simple and rather self-explanatory. BlueJ seems to be designed with a strong didactical background to make the users familiar with OOP. I was using BlueJ for the lecture, even though I used the text from Lewis & Loftus.

Several time later, I realize that Greenfoot which is also developed by the BlueJ personals, is actually more interesting. Greenfoot enhances BlueJ with graphics. In Greenfoot, you can see "the thing" you program and you are dealing with as good as you can see its action. It can be used to develop simple game scenarios. And someday it might become a more sophisticated 2D Java game framework.

Network Recovery and Survivability

I've been requested to fill two or three lecturing sessions in the "MBA Telecommunication" program. The lectures shall cover some or specific issues related to network management. I've been also told that the class audience consists of managers which possess a diverse, mostly non-electrical-engineering background. But they do affiliate with telcos. Now, the question is what topics shall be addressed?

At a glance, I come up with the idea to focus on "Network Recovery & Survivability" (NRS). Why? There are many reasons of course. Nowadays telcos compete each other intensively. In order to survive, they rely heavily on their service offerings. Thus, service reliability becomes a very important aspect in this area of business.

We might still not forget the impact of the Taiwan's earthquake on the telecommunication services in Asia more than one year ago. It is clear that we cannot fight against the nature, we just can try to prevent such natural disasters from happening and to prepare everything necessary if they do happen. As a discipline, NRS gives all considerations to manage and to condition our networking infrastructure in providing high quality telecommunication services.

Domestic Bandwidth Price

According to APJII, the Indonesian ISP Association, this year the price of international Internet bandwidth in Indonesia tends to decrease (reported by detik.com on 29/January/2008). Last year the price was in the range of USD 2.200 - USD 2.500 for each Mbps. But since early 2008 it has been reduced to around USD 1.800 for fiber access and around USD 1.300 to USD 1.500 for satellite links.

Cheap enough? I don't think so. I guess the price in India or Malaysia is (much) cheaper. I don't have any figure right now. But last year, in an informal discussion with some key persons from a malaysian Internet player, the price ratio MY:ID is around 1:4. Right? Malaysian readers, please CMIIW ! Surely, I'm not talking about TM :-D. Otherwise, if you have access to the paid version of Telegeography databases, you can easily compare the prices and drop here a line :-D

Good news ? Maybe. I see that the most indonesian ISPs are moderate and innovate very slowly (if any). Such a price effect may or may not touch end-users. And if it indeed reaches the customers, it might take several months to propagate, or even worse.