JAKARTA (IndoTelko) - The shifting of telecommunications industry business map from voice and SMS based to digital with applications encouragement has created a number of Over The Top (OTT) players emerges such as Facebook, Google, and others.
Current application market is still dominated by foreign OTT, but the government is preparing a number of guidelines so that the local OTT can prevail at home. One of which will be done by the government is to encourage operators to cooperate with local OTT.
"We need to encourage the local OTT and there should be cooperation with the operators. Because based on its business model, there is no revenue sharing with global OTT. It is better if there is a local revenue sharing if the local OTT is encouraged," said Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Informatics Rudiantara, recently.
Indonesian Mobile & Online Content Provider Association (IMOCA) Secretary General Ferrij Lumoring said that the local OTT can make all applications created by foreign OTT.
"We can make everything, if every party is serious in supporting the local application. If there is a strong support and regulation then in the next three years the local players could displace some foreign players," he said, yesterday.
Rudiantara said that there are many local developers conducted their research and create applications with their own capital and without any support and guarantees from the government. As a result, the local applications are slowly dies.
"Local Application developers must pay taxes while the foreign developers are left without taxes. If this practice continues, then the local application would not be a host in their own country," he said.
The government is expected to also encourage banks to assist the funding. Besides, telecom operators are also expected to help supporting the utilization of local application in business.
Based on research made by the South East Asia and Oceania Ericsson Mobility Report in June 2015, shows that the OTT such as social networks, instant messaging and video streaming are dominating the use of smart phones in Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
Vice President Marketing & Communications Ericsson Indonesia Hardyana Syintawati suggest that local application developers in Indonesia should be alerted to seek for opportunities in the future, through the presence of 4G and 5G technologies.
"We want application developers in Indonesia can be flexible and expert in reading the market to prevent from being fragmented certain services. Instead, Indonesian application developers must started to prepare developing the 5G service," Hardyana siad.
According to a study by Frost & Sullivan that in the next few years, Indonesia will have 1.7 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2020 with 470 million mobile subscribers and more than 200 million active Internet users. (id)