Telecommunication Escapes Presidential Aspirants' Attention

Jakarta (Antara) - Neither of the two presidential aspirants in the July 9, 2014 presidential election has mentioned the telecommunication sector in election campaigns, according to Indonesian Telecommunication Community (Mastel) Chairman Mas Wigrantoro Roes Setiyadi. "Neither Prabowo Subianto nor Joko Widodo (Jokowi) has said anything on the telecommunication sector whatsoever during the election campaigns. Perhaps, they deem it unimportant, or have no interest in it," Wigrantoro said here on Saturday. The next president should have greater concern for the telecommunications sector because investment in this field is directly proportional to economic growth, he noted. The two presidential candidates seem to have no interest in the development of the telecommunication sector, according to him. "We hope the new government can see telecommunication as an important sector to support economic growth, and on the other side it must be treated as a means of defense and security, which are directly related to political issues," he stated. Indonesia's telecommunication sector is a highly competitive, rapidly changing and dynamic industry that has come to reflect significant shifts in social behaviour and interaction. The sector has undergone fast-paced development since 1993, following the introduction of a scheme by the government in cooperation with state-owned enterprise Telkom to install millions of fixed telephone lines from 1993-1997. Then, the rise of mobile telephony transformed the communication landscape across the archipelago by connecting friends, relatives and business users in both major islands and far flung areas of the country. In 1997, the country only had 1 million cellular phone subscribers, which grew dramatically to reach 11.3 million subscribers in 2002, surpassing the number of fixed line users. It was driven by increased price competition in the sector as a result of its deregulation in 1999. The cellular phone sector continues to grow at a dramatic pace, with the number of users continuing to increase rapidly every year, reaching millions of customers in 2013. (*)