TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Four months after it was inaugurated by President Joko Widodo, the Palapa Ring has still not given Papua and West Papua an Internet connection. Much like laying down rail tracks, but with no provision of trains.
THIS project: the Palapa Ring, has not turned out at all as claimed. Given the name in reference to Gajah Mada’s famous oath – he being the prime minister of the ancient Majapahit kingdom – to unify all the regions of Nusantara (present-day Indonesia), construction of 12,000 kilometers of fiber optic cables by the communication and informatics ministry claimed it would connect all the regencies and cities of Indonesia. The reality is the “Palapa Oath” has not conquered a large portion of Papua and West Papua.
Four months have passed since the East Palapa Ring – the last portion of the project begun in 2016 – was completed. At its inauguration in mid-October 2019, President Joko Widodo stated that now all the citizenry of Indonesia from Sabang to Merauke have the same opportunity to access the Internet. Jokowi dubbed the project a “Sky tollway”. Yet, what is available in most areas in Papua and West Papua, are stretches of fiber optic with no Internet connection. An analogy would be, the government provided a rail track, but no trains.
No telecommunication operator as yet can be induced to service the regions outside the big towns in the two provinces. To do so, they would have to pay rent to Telkom, the owner of the connection. Careful calculations would show that losses await anyone forcing themselves to operate in the region whose Internet users’ number less than 3 million people and are spread out over an area of 786,000 square kilometers. Compare that with, say, Maluku and North Maluku, with 1.8 million netizens concentrated in a region of 78,000 square kilometers.
Waiting for demand, or first providing supply in an area of the limited population indeed is a chicken and egg situation. The government elected to create the infrastructure even though the population is small. The state built the Rp7.71 trillion project – Rp5.13 trillion of that was allocated for the East Palapa Ring – from a telecommunication operator universal service obligation (USO) fund. But for the infrastructure to function, one other step is still needed which had not been calculated by the government, namely the service of an operator. Releasing that function to a market mechanism is tantamount to allowing the Sky tollway to fly off without meaning.
The impact is already being felt by Papuan and West Papuan citizens. Instead of enjoying the new technology as promised by Jokowi, all they are getting are complications. To register as a candidate civil servant, which can only be done online, for instance, people leave their individual districts in droves to the nearest large town, like Sorong. Schools pay extra to hire servers to be connected with the Internet via satellite to execute the Computer-based National Examination. Meanwhile, the regional administration is in a dither each time the home affairs ministry calls for the monthly teleconference meeting. The Papuan and West Papuan citizenry, in reality, have become the victims of the Sky tollway.
President Jokowi and his underlings should not have gone all out to inaugurate a project that was not yet a hundred percent in place. The Palapa Ring ceremony was enacted six days before Jokowi was sworn in as president for the 2019-2024 period. In this second term, he replaced the minister of communication and informatics from Rudiantara to Johnny G. Plate. Johnny should have first made sure the infrastructure put in place would not go to waste.
There are a few options for Jokowi to be able to fulfill his promise. First, have Telkom service the region from the regencies to the towns. The state-owned enterprise will for sure suffer losses – much like Pertamina was burdened with providing fuel at one price. Second, the government could fill the empty cable network, allowing operators wishing to rent the connection to make a deal with the telecommunication accessibility body of telecommunication and informatics at the communication and informatics ministry, thus abandoning a business-based mechanism. This will be costly, but it is the price that needs to be paid to fulfill equal social justice for all the people of Indonesia. There can be no halfway measure.
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