Communications in Indonesia has a complex history due to the need to reach an extended archipelago of over 17,500 islands. The once important non-electronic communication methods of the past have given way to a considerable telecommunications infrastructure in contemporary

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

History

Indonesia has long been using traditional forms of communications between various islands and villages. It was not until the sixteenth century when the

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

colonised Indonesia, constructing a more elaborate communication system, both within Indonesia and to other countries. The first connection to Australia was an undersea

telegraph Telegraphy is the long-distance transmission of messages where the sender uses symbolic codes, known to the recipient, rather than a physical exchange of an object bearing the message. Thus flag semaphore is a method of telegraphy, whereas p ...

cable that was completed on 18 November 1871, connecting

Java Java (; id, Jawa, ; jv, ꦗꦮ; su, ) is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea to the north. With a population of 151.6 million people, Java is the world's mos ...

to Darwin, and eventually to the Australian Overland Telegraph Line across Australia. After gaining Independence, Indonesia started to develop its own communication systems, generally following the rest of the world. The construction of communication towers and launch of the Palapa series of communication satellites was done during the New Order period.

Infrastructure

A number of lines connect Indonesia to international communication routes. For example, the SEA-ME-WE 3

optical Optics is the branch of physics that studies the behaviour and properties of light, including its interactions with matter and the construction of instruments that use or detect it. Optics usually describes the behaviour of visible, ultravio ...

submarine telecommunications cable lands at both

Medan Medan (; English: ) is the capital and largest city of the Indonesian province of North Sumatra, as well as a regional hub and financial centre of Sumatra. According to the National Development Planning Agency, Medan is one of the four mai ...

and Jakarta connecting Europe with South eastern Asia (several countries up to Japan) and Australia (

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth i ...

). Domestically, Indonesia has good coverage for media across most major islands, although smaller and less populated Islands do not always receive attention from media companies, and rely on satellite communication.

Media

Print

Indonesia has a long list of print media, in the form of

newspapers A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sports ...

and

magazines A magazine is a periodical publication, generally published on a regular schedule (often weekly or monthly), containing a variety of content. They are generally financed by advertising, purchase price, prepaid subscriptions, or by a combination ...

. Some, such as

Kompas ''Kompas'' () is an Indonesian national newspaper from Jakarta which was founded on 28 June 1965. The paper is published by PT Kompas Media Nusantara, which is a part of Kompas Gramedia Group. Its head office is located at the Kompas Multime ...

Media Indonesia ''Media Indonesia'' is an Indonesian daily newspaper published in Jakarta. Reports say ''Media Indonesia'' is the second largest newspaper in Indonesia after the ''Kompas ''Kompas'' () is an Indonesian national newspaper from Jakarta wh ...

Koran Sindo ''Koran Sindo'' (lit. ''Sindo Paper'') is an Indonesian newspaper published by Media Nusantara Citra (MNC Media) under PT Media Nusantara Informasi. The term "Sindo" is taken from the abbreviation of '' Seputar Indonesia'', the former flagship new ...

and Koran Tempo are circulated daily and are relatively simple to obtain. Others are island- or city-specific, and are usually not distributed to other regions.

Telephone

Switchboard operators, Wanita di Indonesia p98 (Ministry of Information)

Telephone A telephone is a telecommunications device that permits two or more users to conduct a conversation when they are too far apart to be easily heard directly. A telephone converts sound, typically and most efficiently the human voice, into e ...

s - main lines in use: 9.99 million (2004) * Telephones - mobile cellular: At the end of 2010, the mobile cellular penetration rate was 67 percent (22 percent at end of 2006).

CDMA Code-division multiple access (CDMA) is a channel access method used by various radio communication technologies. CDMA is an example of multiple access, where several transmitters can send information simultaneously over a single communicatio ...

use is declining in favour of

GSM The Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) is a standard developed by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to describe the protocols for second-generation ( 2G) digital cellular networks used by mobile devices such ...

. * Telephone system: domestic service fair, international service good **domestic: interisland

microwave Microwave is a form of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths ranging from about one meter to one millimeter corresponding to frequencies between 300 MHz and 300 GHz respectively. Different sources define different frequency ra ...

system and HF radio police net; domestic satellite communications system **international: satellite earth stations - 2 Intelsat (1

Indian Ocean The Indian Ocean is the third-largest of the world's five oceanic divisions, covering or ~19.8% of the water on Earth's surface. It is bounded by Asia to the north, Africa to the west and Australia to the east. To the south it is bounded by t ...

and 1

Pacific Ocean The Pacific Ocean is the largest and deepest of Earth's five oceanic divisions. It extends from the Arctic Ocean in the north to the Southern Ocean (or, depending on definition, to Antarctica) in the south, and is bounded by the contin ...

)

Radio

Radio Radio is the technology of signaling and communicating using radio waves. Radio waves are electromagnetic waves of frequency between 30 hertz (Hz) and 300 gigahertz (GHz). They are generated by an electronic device called a transmi ...

broadcast stations: AM 678, FM 43, shortwave 82 (1998) * Radios: 31.5 million (1997)

Television

Television Television, sometimes shortened to TV, is a telecommunication medium for transmitting moving images and sound. The term can refer to a television set, or the medium of television transmission. Television is a mass medium for advertisin ...

broadcast stations: 11 national TV, 60 local TV (From AC Nielsen Report - first Semester 2005): * Televisions: 13.75 million (1997)

Internet

Internet Service Provider An Internet service provider (ISP) is an organization that provides services for accessing, using, or participating in the Internet. ISPs can be organized in various forms, such as commercial, community-owned, non-profit, or otherwise privat ...

s (ISPs): 24 (1999) *

Country code Country codes are short alphabetic or numeric geographical codes (geocodes) developed to represent countries and dependent areas, for use in data processing and communications. Several different systems have been developed to do this. The term ...

(Top-level domain):

.id .id is the Internet country code top-level domain (ccTLD) for Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 isla ...

By June 2011, all sub-districts in Indonesia will be connected to the Internet."Internet service to reach all sub-districts in June"
Antara News, 22 May 2011

Regulatory environment in Indonesia

The media in Indonesia is regulated by the Ministry of Communications and Informatics. LIRNEasia's Telecommunications Regulatory Environment (TRE) index, which summarises stakeholders' perception on certain TRE dimensions, provides insight into how conducive the environment is for further development and progress. The most recent survey was conducted in July 2008 in eight Asian countries, including Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, Pakistan, Thailand, and the Philippines. The tool measured seven dimensions: i) market entry; ii) access to scarce resources; iii) interconnection; iv) tariff regulation; v) anti-competitive practices; and vi) universal services; vii) quality of service, for the fixed, mobile and broadband sectors. Below-average scores received in all sectors and across dimensions reflect general dissatisfaction of the TRE in Indonesia. However, this does not mean that respondents have ignored recent developments. The relatively healthy growth in mobile sector is reflected in the higher TRE scores received by the sector for most dimensions, when compared to the fixed sector. On average, the mobile sector scores best, with fixed and broadband following.

References

{{Telecommunications Mass media in Indonesia