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