Computer in Indonesia is still considered as luxury goods especially since the
economic crisis and the fall of rupiah, even after government have lift computer
from the luxury good lists quite recently. The majority of the warnet users
considered that the advantages of using warnet is because they don't have to pay
telecommunication fee, spend money on computers, pay the subscriber fee to the
ISP. Based on the data issued by the warnet association `natnit.net' web site, the
total existing warnet at present is approximately 1.151 kiosks
Table 2.1. Customer and User of Internet In Indonesia (1996 2001)
Year
Customer
User
Remark
1996 31.000
110.000
1997 75.000
384.000
1998 134.000
512.000
1999 256.000
1.000.000
Estimation
2000 384.000
1.450.000
Estimation
2001 511.000
1.980.000
Estimation
Source : apjii.or.id
At present are about 147 licenses of ISP issued by the government, however; only
55 companies were in operational in the big cities. This situation has created
competitions among the ISP and have reduced subscriber fee to the lowest level,
which is beneficial for the costumer. According to the Indonesia Internet
services association (APJII) on February, 2001, only 10 ISPs were the choice of
80% customers, and among them 4 ISPs are with the biggest with 49 percent of
the existing customers. The tens ISPs were respectively idola.net.id, centrin.net.id,
cbn.net.id, dnet.net.id, indo.net.id, indosat.net.id, mega.net.id, wasantara.net.id,
rad.net.id, dan telkom.net.id (see Table 2.2, below). Furthermore, of these tens
ISPs wasantara.net.id has the widest branches to over 133 cities in Indonesia,
second in line is tekom.net.id with covers 125 cities in Indonesia. The services
provided by these ISPs were e mail, browsing tools, file transfer protocol (FTP),
Internet relay chat (IRC), cyber cafe, web hosting, and web page design.
VI 3