Telecommunications Expert Suggests PLN's Internet Business to be Handed Over to Telkom

GAMEFINITY.ID, Salatiga – The presence of PLN’s fiber internet service makes the competition for internet providers in Indonesia increasingly fierce. Seeing the heated provider competition, one of the telecommunications experts in Indonesia spoke up about this situation.

Telecommunications Observer from the Indonesian Telematics Society (Mastel) and former Commissioner of BRTI, Nonot Harsono commented on PLN’s entry into the fiber optic internet provider market. According to Nonot, PLN shouldn’t need to release Iconnet at all. He reasoned that internet service is not PLN’s field, but Telkom’s.

“It’s even more complicated if the state-owned electricity and gas company has an internet company. Later, Telkom will reply to create a gas and electricity subsidiary.” said Nonot

Nonot also explained that the presence of Iconnet will cause various problems such as harming the state economy considering that PLN is a state-owned company or BUMN.

“It is very unhealthy and very wasteful of investment. If the capital comes from bank loans, it can become bad loans because utilization per network will be very low. In the national economy, it is very inefficient and detrimental.”

To prevent these problems from happening, Nonot recommends that PLN handed over all its internet services to Telkom so that telecommunications governance in Indonesia is maintained.

FTTH Competition Is Getting Tighter

In addition to commenting on PLN’s internet business, Nonot Harsono also explained that the company providing Fiber To The Home or FTTH services was already overcapacity. This can potentially make competition between providers unhealthy.

This case is quite often the case where one provider monopolizes an area so that the provider’s services are not spread evenly.

“This FTTH service has many competitors and the service zone is not regulated. Dozens of FTTH providers can kill each other in areas where people can afford it. The competitors are not only IndiHome, MyRepublic, MNC Play, First Media, Biznet, and others,” said Nonot.

Nonot then asked the Ministry of Communication and Information (Kominfo) to intervene to regulate FTTH companies so that competition between providers remains healthy.

“Kominfo must regulate by dividing the service area in such a way so that everyone can get a share of the cake, even though they do not dominate the market,”