M

oving ahead

World Telecommunication Day is celebrated annually on May 17 to raise public awareness of the benefits of communication technology. The theme this year is “ICTs and improving road safety”.

In conjunction with the international observance, The Jakarta Post explores cutting-edge telecommunications technology, from the rise of Internet-based entertainment, the need to tap into technology’s “gentle touch” and developments in the cellular phone network industry.

When the world held its breath as we passed Dec. 21, 2012, it was business as usual at www.youtube.co.id. Launched just a couple of months earlier, the local YouTube channel became the ears and eyes of the doomsday watchers as thousands eyeballed their screens for the latest sights and sounds of a terror that thankfully never came.

Alongside Twitter, Facebook and Google, the Internet’s biggest video channel saw record traffic in 2012, thanks to the rise of mobile broadband and the explosive growth of connected pocket devices. Smartphones are getting cheaper; mobile Internet is getting faster.

Mikha Angelo, 15, is a sound engineering student in SSR Jakarta, where a team of TV producers set up its auditioning and training facility. Egged on by his peers, he reluctantly auditioned for X Factor Indonesia. Shortly after his first performance in January, he became an Internet sensation when his voice and boy-next-door personality captured the hearts of the jury and the audiences. A couple of performances and 350,000 followers later, he has his name atop iTunes Indonesia’s best-sellers list in less than six months, and a record deal in his pocket despite being eliminated from the competition.

The iTunes Indonesia Store, Apple’s content distribution arm, quietly began selling music and movies in early December last year. With more than 200 million active accounts, iTunes is the largest and the first all-digital music store to be in business. Mikha and his brothers, who form the band The Overtunes, are themselves loyal young customers.

Born in the pre-Internet era, Mikha’s mother Yvonne is surprised every day by the immense power of the social web.

“It’s amazing how TV, coupled with YouTube and Twitter, have boosted Mikha’s visibility in such a short time. Online word-of-mouth is terribly fast.”

Mikha’s Internet buzz landed a deal for him and his band of brothers, but it’s another matter to turn that interest into real profit.

“Broad must first be realized in broadband before we can take things to the next level,” said the young man’s father, Lans Brahmantyo, an ex- NeXT employee who runs Afterhours Books.

“Mikha sang brilliantly, and the audiences support him dearly, but 350,000 is relatively low compared to the hundreds of millions of television audiences who cheered him on.”

Pioneering efforts

Radiohead, the U2 of the Internet age, were pioneers in digital music distribution. In 2005, they released an independently recorded album and sold it on their own website as “pay what you want”, to resounding success. It made waves on the blogosphere which inspired artists and creators to rethink the old ways of marketing their products.

Amanda Palmer took it to the next level when she became the first Internet celebrity to raise more than $1 million for an unannounced musical project.

At her famous TED talk, she simply said that she was given something that most dared not ask for before. She metaphorically compares her method to a street performer — her previous job – asking for spare change. Ask and you shall be given. She reckons she owes her success to those who made it all possible, her audience.

Louis CK enjoyed similar success. He made his name as an actor, director and producer for a number of shows in the US. His colleagues thought he was insane when he planned to release his self-directed comedy production as a digital-only video download — without any copyright protection.

From his US$5 per download offer, he made more than $1 million in sales, and close-to-zero losses from the much-feared digital piracy.

While many such stories are widely circulated on the Internet, it is a radically different scene in our country today. Costly and unreliable Internet connections prevent us participating in this digital revolution. In the digital vs. physical argument, traditional goods always win.

Perhaps the argument is more about free vs. easy, rather than digital vs. traditional.

“Most Internet users here are not paying customers” says Edy, a web host owner who ran a profitable web-based business for more than a decade before he decided to start his cloud-based hosting services.

“The Internet needs to prove itself before it can replace traditional channels. Take a TV set for example, you turn it on, and you are watching TV almost instantly, digital content can’t achieve this yet as connection speed is still relatively slow in most areas. But definitely we are on the cusp of a new era.”

Losses and gains

Countless success stories have dragged traditional media back to the drawing board. Rupert Murdoch, considered the world’s richest media mogul, launched The Daily as the first iPad-only newspaper manned by an experienced editorial team of more than a hundred.

Less than two years later, with more than US$60 million lost, The Daily shut its doors as the most talked-about digital failure in Internet publishing history.

One man’s failure is another’s motivation.

Marco Arment, creator of Instapaper, a read-later service and app, saw an opportunity behind The Daily’s demise. He tossed his ideas to his influential-blogger friends, created a new app, and published it as The Magazine on iTunes Store. The free app comes with a 1-week free trial, and it was enough to bring in 25,000 new readers. Three months later, he hired an editor and was making a healthy profit.

The Internet will celebrate its 50th anniversary soon, and obviously, digitally-connected entertainment is at an early stage. Beyond the hardware and software inventions are the hearts and minds of the creators and audiences connected through the power of the web. Somewhere in between, orchestrated by humans or organically grown, are the ideas and inventions waiting to be harvested. And therein lies your chance.