F

ollowing the announcement by US media streaming giant Netflix that it will enter the Indonesian market, the government has indicated that it will study possible impacts on the market before taking any action in response.

'€œWe must study further the implications of Netflix for the Indonesian public,'€ Communication and Information Technology Minister Rudiantara told reporters on Thursday.

'€œIf the disadvantages outweigh the advantages, then something must be done to fix that. We have to study the Netflix entrance carefully as we do not want to hinder technology for the sake of the public,'€ he added.

Netflix Inc announced its global service expansion into 130 countries on Wednesday, including Indonesia, at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the US. According to Reuters, Netflix is already available in 60 countries worldwide and aims to cover 200 countries by the end of 2016.

According to Rudiantara, Netflix'€™s presence might affect existing industries, such as the entertainment industry and other online business.

He added that his ministry would seek advice from the Culture and Education Ministry to look into the content available on Netflix to gauge its impact on society.

Meanwhile, IT expert Onno W. Purbo said that Netflix had stated that a relatively unstable and slow internet speed might hinder the optimum operation of Netflix since the HD streaming service would require a significant amount of bandwidth, which would be demanding on services.

Onno said users would need cable or fiber-optic internet broadband connections to achieve optimum HD streaming as HD streaming required up to 2.5 megabits per second (Mbps) to function properly.

However, Rudiantara was confident that the country'€™s internet infrastructure would be ready, especially mobile broadband networks thanks to the commercial availability of the 4G/LTE mobile network nationwide, to support a service like Netflix.

Netflix'€™s listed Indonesian rates are Rp 109,000 per month for its Basic service, Rp 139,000 a month for its Standard service and Rp 169,000 a month for its Premium service. The difference between the options is that the Basic service only allows subscribers to use the service on one screen at a time, compared to the Premium option, which allows 4 simultaneous screens to use the service.

Aside from Indonesia, other major markets where Netflix has launched include India, Saudi Arabia and Russia. A notable exception from the list is China, which was left out of Wednesday'€™s announcement due to the company still currently trying to build its '€œrelationships'€ with the Chinese market.