The Ministry of Information and Communications will announce the winners of the tender for Wimax broadband operating licenses in July.

Information and Communications Minister Muhammad Nuh said the ministry was now in the process of determining its fee policy for each zone that will be able to access Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (Wimax).

“We are now discussing the fee regulation with the Finance Ministry,” Nuh said.

There are 15 zones in the country where Wimax services will initially be made available.

According to the ministry data, the Wimax service fee will vary in each zone, with pricing adjusted to local people’s purchasing power.

The ministry will apply a cross-subsidy principle, thus zones with high Wimax’s fees will subsidize those with lower fees.

Operating licenses for each zone will be given to two operators and it will be possible for a company to become an operator in more than one zone at the same time.

“Many companies are eager to get a  license for Wimax because it opens [up]  new markets in

communications technology,” Nuh added.

Around 73 telecommunications companies are participating in the tender. Tender participants were required to propose a minimum of 35 percent use of local products to supporting the new system.

Major telecommunication companies such as state-owned PTTelkom, its competitor PT Indosat, and Bakrie Telecom also took part in the tender.

The zones for Wimax service will include three zones in Sumatra, four zones in Java, two zones in Kalimantan, and one zone each for Bali, Nusa Tenggara, Papua, Maluku, Sulawesi, and Riau Island.

WiMax is an advanced technology that provides high-throughput broadband connections over long distances without having to build costly infrastructure and large numbers of transmission towers.

The technology, which provides an alternative to cable and digital subscriber lines (DSL), has a coverage of around 50 kilometers in radius from each base station and relatively low investment costs compared to existing 3G technology.

Wimax can transfer 80 Megabytes of data per  second, much faster than the latest 3G technology which is only able to send 7.2 Megabytes of data per second.

The ministry organized the tender to extend telecommunications and broadband Internet services to remote areas in Indonesia.

In January, the ministry produced five ministerial decrees, to regulate Wimax service standards.

Currently, official number of Internet users in Indonesia reaches about 30 million. However taking into account all the internet users making use of  mobile phones with connectivity then the figure for users can reach over 51 million.

Government aims to connect half of all Indonesians to the internet by  2015, which would bring the total by then up to 120 million.  

But Indonesia still ranks very low in the region in the use of broadband for Internet access. (mrs)

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