He won immediate support of big state-owned enterprises (Telkom, BRI and PLN), big tech companies (Facebook, Huawei, Google), a bunch of national ministries; emergent start-ups (Tokopedia, Bukalapak, Gojek, Grab).

Acting in a cooperative atmosphere established in the aftermath of his father’s passing, he is activating their participation in a Meaningful Broadband Working Group. Mixing public and private investment, it aims to bring rapid digital transformation to 30 million of the nation’s poorest and most isolated Indonesian citizens.  

Calling for an “equitable digital economy”, Ilham’s plan represents an alternative to the top-down Industry 4.0 notions currently in vogue in Jakarta. At a time when the business elite along Jl. Sudirman is intent on using emergent technologies to streamline their supply chains, this plan aims to bring many of the same Industry 4.0 notions to citizens and locations not served by the internet.

As part of the plan, he announced a methodology for financial innovation, called USO X 8 which proposes that the Universal Services Obligation (USO) fund, estimated at US$200 million per year, could produce an eight-fold financial multiplier impact, yielding $1.6 billion a year. This fund would support Meaningful Broadband Ecosystem. Eight trial regencies will soon pilot the project.

Meaningful Broadband is hardly a brand-new concept. Indeed, I have been Ilham’s partner in advancing this notion since 2004. In that year, as a professor of Technology Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, I sought a large developing nation that could serve as “proof of concept” for a plan to close the digital divide. And I knew I needed a well-connected champion for this notion, someone who was business-savvy but not tied to telecommunications investment. Ilham was the right person. 

Since that year, with Ilham leading the way, Meaningful Broadband has evolved step-by-step into a testable model. The anchor for the Meaningful Broadband Ecosystem is a $1.4 billion satellite program funded USO managed by Bakti Kominfo, it is specifically designed to bring the internet to all unserved locations.

If present trends continue, Indonesia could become a digital colony.

This project furthers the Habibie legacy in technology and democracy. Call it Habibie 4.0. Though he was only in office for 17 months, president Habibie did the unthinkable.  A brilliant technocrat, he reversed the pattern of the authoritarian Soeharto era, by quietly establishing one of the developing world’s most enduring democracies.

He didn’t just free the media and political parties tied to constitutional democracy. He and his research institute, The Habibie Center, also furthered bottom-up governance. The former president strengthened the role of regencies vis-à-vis the Republic of Indonesia. The effect was to create a more diverse and open society that functions from the ground up.

So with his passing, you would think that Indonesia’s democracy is safe, right? Well, not really. Democracy, in Indonesia and elsewhere is now threatened by a big transformational factor:  digitalization. The top-down spread of the global and regional digital economies is consolidating control by the most digitally powerful corporations and governments. 

If presents trends continue, Indonesia could become a digital colony. As it’s business leaders form alliances with big tech companies, this nation could be tied to the “winner take all dynamics” that characterize the global internet economy. 

Ilham is not an obvious digital innovator. Like his father, he is a civil engineer, not an electrical engineer or computer scientist who gravitates to roles in telecommunications. As a businessman, he followed his father into aerospace. But the fact that he is not part of the warfare between telecom operators puts him in a neutral but credible position. I recognized this when I first met him back in 2004. And it seems particularly relevant now that the digital economy is sweeping to the nation. 

The key is to produce new collaborations — new financial models, new management systems, new technologies, new concepts of governance — which are all designed to produce “meaningfulness”. To define it we use three terms: “usable, affordable and empowering”.  That last term—empowerment is the key. It refers to a user experience that avoids addiction and promotes pragmatic 24/7 learning.  

Indeed, Ilham is pursuing a more egalitarian approach to the digital economy by bringing digital empowerment to the bottom rung of society. In doing so, he may indeed bring his father’s modus operandi into the digital age.

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