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he Communications and Information Ministry has decided to file an appeal over the Jakarta State Administrative Court'€™s (PTUN) ruling to revoke a ministerial decree on digital TV and is maintaining its plan to digitize the country'€™s broadcasting system to provide wider bandwidth for developing broadband.

On March 5, the PTUN handed down a verdict in a lawsuit filed by the Association of Network Television (ATVJI) against the ministerial decree, resulting in the licenses of 33 companies that had won multiplexing tenders getting revoked.

'€œAfter thorough considerations, we will file an appeal over the decision,'€ Communications and Information Ministry spokesman Ismail Cawidu said on Wednesday.

The ministry would prepare materials for the appeal within two months, he added.

Under Ministerial Decree No. 22/2011, the government sets a target for the migration of analog TV broadcasting to digital TV broadcasting by 2018. The government has also appointed 33 companies multiplexing agents across 11 provinces in the country to help with the migration.

By migrating from analog to digital broadcasting, the government would then be able to allocate 700-MHz band '€” which is now used by analog TV broadcasting '€” to develop broadband in a bid to provide faster Internet, Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara has said.

Only a third of Indonesia'€™s population of roughly 250 million people has access to the Internet. The country'€™s average connection speed of 2.4 megabits per second is among the lowest in Southeast Asia, according to a recent report by cloud services provider Akamai.

Rudiantara recently told The Jakarta Post that some considerations that would likely be used to support his ministry'€™s appeal were the fact that a number of media companies had poured investment to prepare for the digitization and that a revision to the Broadcasting Law was currently being discussed at the House of Representatives.

ATVJI chairman Bambang Santoso said in a phone interview that the industry group would still go against the ministerial decree.

'€œWe are not fighting digitization, but we disagree with the decree that appoints a number of multiplexing agents from which analog-based broadcasters in the future must use their services to be digital,'€ he explained.

Meanwhile, Neil Tobing, the corporate secretary of the publicly listed PT Visi Media Asia (Viva Media), said that his firm would comply with any schedules set by the ministry.

'€œWhat'€™s most important is the specific regulation on licensing and set top box specifications,'€ he said, adding that his firm was one of the appointed multiplexing agents.

The government has announced its US$22 billion broadband plan, which is expected to provide affordable Internet to the majority of Indonesia'€™s population, with fixed broadband and mobile broadband penetration expected to hit 30 percent and 100 percent of the urban population, respectively, by 2019.

The five-year project also aims to deliver fixed and mobile broadband to 6 percent and 52 percent of the rural population, respectively.

'€œWhen we talk about the future, we will talk about 4G/LTE. For instance, wider bandwidth block is necessary to provide better and faster 4G/LTE service,'€ Rudiantara said.