Government Encourages Multi Technology Mobile Phone Sales

Ilustrasi (dok)

JAKARTA (IndoTelko) - The Indonesian government will issue a regulation to encourage the use of cell phones (mobile phones) that supports multiple technologies.

"We are now preparing the Ministerial Regulation to encourage the use of smartphones. So, we will not allow anymore 2G phone sold. After the Ministerial Regulation is issued, vendors must only sell 2G, 3G, and 4G technology supported phones," said the Director General of Postal and Information Resources of the Ministry of Technology and Communications Muhammad Budi Setiawan, when giving the Keynote Speech at Talk Show IndoTelko Forum, yesterday.

Budi said that the regulation issuance is aiming to encourage the migration of feature phones to smartphones as the digital age economy is coming in the future. "The key to maximize the data infrastructure built by the operator is rich content and affordable device. Operators have built the network, we want to provide incentives to those two encouragement sectors to let the digital economy run," he said.

Indosat President Director & CEO Alexander Rusli acknowledged the existence of a smartphone at an affordable price will accelerate the digital economy ecosystem.

"If the price is affordable, tehn it will be enjoyed by many data network operators. We are now focusing on feature phone users in migrating to smartphones, as well as educating users of smartphones to be smart with the device. Because there are still many "Pay as You Use" data users instead of subscribing to the data package," he explained.

Xl Director of Service Management Ongki Kurniawan said that there are three things that must be considered to encourage internet economy namely infrastructure, affordability, and relevance (destination).

"Affordable device is required, but do not forget to educate about the relevance to let users know the purpose of accessing data services," he said.

While General Manager Polytron Mobile Phone, Usun Pringgodigdo admits that they still produce 2G phones because the production costs are cheaper and there is a market demand. "We were just learning to produce 2G phones. But this year we will focus on 4G phones, especially on how to produce a device with a price of under Rp1 million," he said.

IndoTelko Forum adviser Johnny Swandi Sjam reminded that in encouraging to produce devices at affordable price must not forget local content. "We are not only supporting the local content on the hardware for 4G technology, but also the application. We should emulate South Korea about this digital economy," he said.

A number of research institutes said that smartphone shipments to Indonesia this year will reach 50 million units. It is estimated that there are about 60 million Telkomsel users are using Pay as You Use data service and approximately 40 million 3G smartphone users. XL Axiata is estimated at about 16 million smartphone users.(es)