John and Siska, my friends of many decades, have a son in Sydney, Australia. Almost every other night the son will call home. Not a surprise, as he is their only child. The interesting thing is that he can afford to make these lengthy phone calls from Australia without having to ask his parents to send him any money.
Endowed with a very bright mind, he lives off money from a scholarship and his monthly earnings from working as a research assistant.
John, who has already retired, swears he will never call his son from Jakarta - unless, of course, there is something extremely urgent. The reason is clear: It would cost him a fortune to make such a call.
"It is amazing how expensive it is to make an outgoing call to anywhere in the world from Indonesia, while the costs of making international calls to Indonesia have nosedived in recent years," said Erik Meijer, the deputy vice president of Bakrie Telecom (BTEL), during our conversation in his office in Kuningan, South Jakarta just the day before his company launched its new international clear-voice telephone services.
Nobody knew exactly how much more expensive it was to make a call from Indonesia to other countries than it was to make a call from outside in, as the rates are set on a case-by-case basis.
Erik believes it ranged between 10 to 30 percent more expensive, but my guess is that it could be much more. The only explanation is that all this time our international carriers have been enjoying a handsome margin for each outgoing call we made.
In the old days, Indosat was the only operator to provide internal call services. Later, Satelindo was given a license to provide the same service. When Indosat acquired Satelindo, we either used the prefix 001 or 008 to make a direct call overseas.
Then Telkom, which has all the necessary infrastructure for the same service, followed.
For many years until last week, Indosat and Telkom were the only international carriers for us. Thus, if the cost of international calls were so high, it was also understandable.
In 2007, the Indonesian government decided to award one of the other operators with the license to become a third international carrier. Bakrie Telecom (BTEL) won this - to the surprise of people who believed its larger competitor Excelcomindo would be a far more sensible choice. Regardless, BTEL has pledged to find ways to make international calls far more affordable to the masses.
"We have negotiated the rates with our partners Telstra and Tata Communications, and so far we have been able to offer savings of up to 77 percent to anyone making international calls using our 009 access code," Erik said.
As reported in The Jakarta Post last Thursday, BTEL, which is more widely known for its Esia and Wifone product brands, is aiming for a 30 percent share of the market for international calls. The strategy is to reduce profits and increase traffic volume. This strategy is in line with its emphasis on affordability for subscribers.
BTEL has built their own gateways - one in Jakarta and one in Batam - to connect to Testra's and Tata's nodes in Singapore. More gateways are in the pipeline, as well as a submarine fibre-optic cable to Darwin, Australia.
BTEL, which has also received a license to provide long distance services, has been aggressively expanding its coverage to most parts of Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan and Sulawesi. The strongest bases for its CDMA-based Fixed Wireless Access are in Jakarta, West Java and Banten.
Now, would it be possible for a subscriber of a different operator to take advantage of BTEL's lower rates? "Certainly," Erik said, "All he has to do is enter 009 before the country code and the rest of the number he wants to call. BTEL will bear the interconnection costs."
By the way, it is the government's requirement that all operators must make their network accessible to all callers.
A big question mark remains, however. We all know that technology has never stood still. Voice over IP (VoIP) has made the cost of making calls anywhere in the world close to zero. My friend John's son must be using the VoIP services to make his daily reports to his parents. Also, if you are on the Internet, you can make virtually free-of-charge calls using Yahoo! Messenger, Skype or other similar applications. So, is the IDD still such a big deal nowadays?
It turns out that there is still a pool of potential users for clear-voice international services. Think of the families of migrant workers. They may become interested about using the IDD services if the price is affordable.
"All this time we have seen significant voice traffic to China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and the Middle East, where a lot of Indonesians are working," said A. Noorman Iljas, BTEL's Corporate Communications manager. I would also include those whose family members are in Saudi Arabia during the hajj pilgrimage.
At the same time, BTEL is also working on providing data communication. "We are partnering with tier-I network providers for data, as we are committed to making Internet bandwidth more affordable in Indonesia," Erik said.
The availability of a third choice for direct-dial calls to overseas encouragingly reflects the fact that our government has finally caught on to the realization that competition in the marketplace is healthy and ultimately beneficial to end users.
Now our policy makers must work even harder to keep abreast with technology advancements, and lay out the regulatory foundations to ensure fair treatment of all players. They must also ensure that we, as service customers, are getting our money's worth.
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