M

span class="inline inline-center">Maria Ade and Pandega Rakitan, both 26, prefer streaming television shows online to watching them live on TV, saying it is more convenient and saves them time.

Maria, who works long hours at a private company, uses her gadgets on a daily basis to stream TV shows, including her favorite, the Korean reality TV show Running Man. Her work hours prevent her from catching up on broadcast TV programming, except for late at nights and on the weekend.

'€œI usually stream Korean reality shows, Hollywood serials and movies or football matches on free websites or YouTube,'€ she said. She said she spent around Rp 150,000 each month for Internet access for streaming videos.

Pandega, a civil servant, also opts for streaming TV programs on the Internet, as streamed videos
have fewer commercials compared to TV.

'€œI usually stream shows ranging from games to motivational TV programs,'€ he said, adding that he normally spent time twice a week at home watching them on his computer or smartphone with a medium-speed Internet connection.

Like Maria and Pandega, many youngsters have begun to favor streamed content, according to an Ericsson study that found streaming services had already surpassed broadcast TV in popularity.

The study, titled '€œ10 Hot Consumer Trends 2015'€, surveyed thousands of Internet users in 23 countries and found that 75 percent favored streaming rather than watching broadcast TV, a significant increase from 61 percent in 2011.

Thomas Jul, the newly installed president director of PT Ericsson Indonesia, said that although the survey did not include Indonesia, he believed the country mirrored the global shift toward streaming services.

'€œStreaming is probably here as much as it is in other parts of the world,'€ he said, adding that technology take-up and improved Internet connectivity in the country were contributing factors.

Indonesia'€™s Internet data use is expected to grow more than sixfold, from 84 exabytes this year to 656 exabytes by 2020, according to a study jointly conducted by the International Data Corporation (IDC) and data storage company EMC.

Jul said that five-year trends noted by the Ericcson study, such as the move toward digital purses and domestic robots, could also occur in Indonesia, where mobile broadband and cloud technology were increasingly available.

The country is currently developing its information, communications and technology infrastructure by boosting its 4G, fast-Internet network and making affordable mobile broadband more accessible.

But there is an Internet access gap between urban and rural Indonesians and access is still limited in remote areas in the country.

Though there are more cell phones than there are people in Indonesia, only 12 percent had access to mobile broadband last year, and that was at a relatively slow speed of 512 kilobytes-per-second, according to ministry data quoted by Reuters.

For fixed-line broadband, access was even lower, at 5 percent of the total population