Indonesia Could Become International Internet Hub: Expert

Jakarta, Aug 28 (Antara) - Indonesia has considerable potential to be an international Internet hub, given the increasing use of Internet in the country, said Bandung Institute of Technology IT expert Suhono Harso Supangkat here on Thursday. "Currently, the global Internet traffic hub for Asian region is located in Singapore, Hong Kong, or Japan. Indonesia also has the capability and is viable to be a hub because of the large market potential and the growth in Internet traffic in the last five years," stated Supangkat. Internet users in Indonesia had grown 13 percent in 2013 compared to 2012, or increased from 63 million to 71.19 million, Supangkat said. Indonesia already has a pretty strong submarine undersea backbone cable and fiber optic infrastructure, and the Sulawesi-Maluku-Papua Cable System project owned by the state`s telecommunication operator, Telkom, has been completed. The red-plated telecommunication`s interprovincial cable project has been providing 5,444 kilometers of submarine cable and 655 kilometers of terrestrial cable, which uses Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing network to deliver 32x100 gigabytes bandwidth capacity per fiber pair. The project is expected to be fully operational by 2015. Telkom has invested Rp1.7 trillion for the project. In the midst of a large investment, Telkom showed an operational increase in the first half of 2014, which was marked by a revenue of Rp43.54 trillion or a growth of 8.4 percent from the same period in 2013. In the first half of 2014, Telkom had gained Rp7.411 trillion, up 4 percent compared to the same period in 2013, amounting to Rp7.125 trillion. Telkom shares in the capital market for the first half of 2014 had also recorded a satisfactory result. Telkom shares on Wednesday, August 26, was reported to have reached Rp2,785 per sheet, leaping 48 percent from the price at the end of 2012.