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Bridging Indonesia’s digital divide
Indonesia may be home to a huge proportion of the world’s Facebook and Twitter users but when it comes to internet usage, the country suffers from unequal access, proficiency discrepancies and inadequate infrastructure
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I
ndonesia may be home to a huge proportion of the world’s Facebook and Twitter users but when it comes to internet usage, the country suffers from unequal access, proficiency discrepancies and inadequate infrastructure.
The digital gap between geographic areas, households, individuals and business is often wide, with connectivity still predominantly enjoyed by people in the more developed western islands of Java, Sumatra and Bali, while millions of people in the eastern regions of the archipelago struggle with basic access.
A recent study carried out by the Association of Indonesian Internet Providers (APJII) and the University of Indonesia (UI) suggests that 89 million people, out of the nation’s 250 million people, currently have internet access and that, of these, most use it for social media purposes.
Since Indonesia began to develop the related infrastructure in the 1980s, the number of internet users has been rising and so has the proportion of users who make the most of the internet, for productive purposes such as starting businesses.
With an increase in affordable smartphones, many people can now access the internet on their mobile phones. In many rural areas, people have been encouraged to use their cell phones to monitor and compare the price of basic commodities against those of other regions in order to secure a competitive price.
Slow connections remain a headache. At 2.2 megabits per second (Mbps), the available speed is the slowest among comparable ASEAN countries, such as Singapore (at almost 13 Mbps) and Vietnam (3.2 Mbps).
Indonesia has begun to address the issue, starting with the introduction of 4G/LTE and the resumption of the Palapa Ring project, in which 11,000 km of undersea fiber optic cables will be installed to connect 135 district capitals. Laws are being amended to accommodate the unstoppable advance of technology.
If the scheme proceeds as expected, it is foreseeable that aspects of the nation’s governance, education, business, entertainment and media will increasingly move online in years to come.
