M

easures should be taken to improve Indonesia’s Internet infrastructure in order to catch up with the rapidly growing number of Internet users in the country, a senior advisor from the US Department of State has said.

“First of all, the political parties have to recognize that Internet infrastructure has to catch up with the 21st century Internet growth,“ said Alec Ross, the Senior Advisor for Innovation for the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a live digital video conference last Friday at @america, the US Embassy’s high-tech cultural center in Jakarta.

Suggestions he gave to the Indonesian government included building a spectrum that allowed private sections to compete for developing Internet resources through auctions. He said: “I’ve always been scared by monopoly. The more competition there is, the better. It will give them [private companies] incentives to build for the next generation.”

He also advised that big institutions become anchors for communities. Universities, government buildings and large network community assets should take capacity in universities to make more wireless services available in other communities, he said.

Ross’ suggestion was initiated by one of the audience members, Charles Wiriawan, a communications manager at a local company, who raised the concern about Indonesia’s growing need for more abundant Internet capacity and compared it to Jakarta’s traffic problem.

“Imagine in five or 10 years, the number of Internet users will keep growing, but the infrastructure stays the same; it will create a traffic jam,” Charles said. “Even though we are fully democratic [in getting information] like in America, it is hard for us to get quality content online sometimes.”

According to internetstats.com, Indonesia currently has about 40 million Internet users with a penetration rate of 16.1%. From 2001 to 2011, the number of Internet users has grown more than 1800%.