Using ICT to accelerate development in Papua and West Papua

• Importance of ICT Development, including E-Government at the National Level
• Accelerating the Development of Next-Generational Broadband Infrastructure in Papua and West Papua
• Development of E-Government and Addressing the Challenges of Access to ICT
• Planning for National Connectivity on the Basis of ICT (including the proposed Papua Economic Corridor)

Issues/questions raised:

• Why is the Internet so slow and limited in Papua?
• When will Papua and West Papua provinces be able to enjoy Internet services similar to those in other regions of Indonesia?
• Local Governments plan to invest in fibre optic connectivity for public use; what is required; what has to be prepared; and what can be done using local Government revenues?
• Can a Detikda (Regional ICT Council) be established?
• Better coordination of local infrastructure development is very important, for example of telecommunications infrastructure and electricity, but also roads

General observations:

• The workshop was a major awareness-raising opportunity for many stakeholders.
• Many participants discovered just in the workshops that high capacity Internet connectivity can and will become available for Papua—as announced by PT Telkom. Many institutions have being using low-capacity and inefficient satellite connections, mostly routed via Jakarta.
• Many participants still have the perception that adding more satellites (VSAT)s would solve their connectivity problems, while in fact these are a very costly short-term solution mainly due to the high bandwidth prices. The need for fibre optic connectivity has not been recognized yet beyond a small group of telecom industry insiders and participants from outside Papua.
• Many participants learned what ICT programs the national Government has developed (including for example in Education) and what is in the pipeline for Papua and West Papua provinces (such as the on-going universal service obligation.USO projects to bring basic public telephone service to all 3000 villages, shared Internet access at Kecamatan level, etc.).
• Many ICT users in Papua and West Papua have yet to formulate their requirements/needs other than that Internet should be faster and cheaper.
• District Governments, with some exceptions, have not yet prepared specific plans to use ICT as a solution for a broad range of development issues.

General conclusions and recommendations:

• Participants generally felt that the use of ICT to accelerate the development of Papua is important and that the current lack of connectivity and total dependency on “emergency” satellite solutions is a major barrier.
• ICT based learning will result in a paradigm shift in formal and non-formal education
• Telematics/ICT is an industry that could spur regional economic growth
• ICT is a tool to improve the quality of human resources and unifying the nation
• Establishing connectivity between all Government departments/agencies (city networks) to create a “better”, more efficient and more effective Government. Bureaucracy can be reduced if different Government departments/agencies use applications which can be connected through ICT.
• Papua and West Papua provinces should get broadband Internet access similar to the rest of Indonesia and the capacity and quality of telecommunication services in Eastern Indonesia should be improved
• Broadband connectivity of the Papua provinces to the outside world should be accelerated
• Broadband connectivity within the Papua provinces should be accelerated
• Fibre-optic connectivity is the necessary building block to provide the capacity and quality needed and to remove the satellite bottleneck.
• Establish a Government data center facilitating faster deployment of new ICT services.
• Utilize local e-mail addresses to improve email performance and avoid the routing of local traffic via limited capacity satellite links to Jakarta
• Provide secure/safe content
• Establish an internet Exchange to keep traffic regional/local instead of routing via Jakarta
• Local Governments can play a major role in accelerating connectivity and use of ICT to support regional development. In particular issues like providing permissions for landing stations, access to land, rights of way, ducts along roads, access to mountaintops for an initial microwave route into the highlands, and land for more shared towers for mobile (broadband) services.

Presenters from the event

Proposed Action Plan

• Prioritize deployment of submarine cable networks (Palapa Ring) to Papua and West Papua (Connectivity to outside Papua). This will not only provide high performance networking capability to provincial and coastal economic centres, but also allow satellite transponders serving key telecommunications nodes and individual offices in city centers to be re-provisioned to support rural areas and islands. For example fibre-optic access for Jayapura would provide bandwidth to the area in increments of 10 Gigabits per second, more than 1,000 times the existing capacity, at much lower unit cost, and with less than 5 percent of satellite latency. PT Telkom has committed to roll-out a sub-marine fibre optic cable system from Manado, via the Maluku provinces, to Fak-Fak, Sorong, Manokwari, Biak, Sarmi and Jayapura. The tendering process is due to start shortly and deployment is anticipated in 2012. Telkom implements this project as part of their role as agent of development and not as a very attractive business case. Longer term Telkom might be interested to deploy to Kaimana, Timika and Merauke along the Southern coast but in the near future this would require financial support by the ICT Fund.
  Local Government can support this by providing landing rights, land for landing stations, rights of way, access to ducts along roads, etc.

• Prioritize deployment of fibre-optic and/or microwave transmission to the Kabupaten centers (Connectivity inside Papua). This will provide high performance networking capability between the coastal cities and the other Kabupaten. Along roads fibre optic cables can be deployed. Areas without any road access, like most of the highlands are challenging but technically feasible based on mountain top, solar powered, microwave links. This would require financial support by the ICT Fund and local support of the Government with respect to land, rights of way, etc.

• Aggregate Government demand for communications, and facilitate more efficient and secure Government communications networks (Connectivity in the city; Government network; introduction of more eGov applications). A key step is to interconnect all government offices in Jayapura and Manokwari within a metropolitan area network (MAN). No intra-governmental communications traffic should leave the local area, and all offices should share a common routing and switching plan. In addition, all offices should be interconnected with fibre optic cables, eliminating the need for wireless communications between offices which in many cases are either broken or functioning poorly. Routine ICT utilities such as email should be hosted or correlated locally, eliminating use of risky public email systems for official government communications. Schools, health care centers, universities, etc. are also prime locations to be served through this local connectivity network. The eGovernment applications available at the national level should be made available in Papua and West Papua to create a “better” and “smarter” Government.

• Extend access network to the more remote locations. In particular mobile (broadband) services can be extended to more remote locations once backbone capacity becomes available. Solar powered equipment, suitable for the local conditions, is commercially available nowadays. The local Government can facilitate that by solving issues with traditional land and the use of shared towers.