Indonesia Still can`t Rules OTT

Ilustrasi (dok)

JAKARTA (IndoTelko) - Since 2013 Indonesian telecommunications regulator has initiated a regulation to push Over The Top (OTT) players for equality in doing business with the operator.

At that time, the Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory Body (BRTI) consider that he OTT players have distorted the Indonesian cellular business which needs to be regulated the creative based business players.

OTT is identical players to fill in the operator's data pipes. OTT players is considered a latent danger to the operator for not issuing a large investment, but making profits over the operator's network. Businesses groups that has ben entering the OTT including Facebook, Twitter, and Google.

Surprisingly, since the idea was introduced, somehow the regulation cannot be applied as a Regulation of the Minister of Communications and Information Technology (Permenkominfo) as promised.

"There was an initiative from the regulators and the ministry to prepare the OTT two years ago. At the time the assumption was considered to be less appropriate which made the scheme foundered and alternaive of this regulation was discussed," said the regulatory body member M Ridwan Effendi, recently.

According to him, one of the causes for OTT regulation was never completed because the operators themselves can not provide technical and detail answer on what they want to do with OTT.

"We can get into OTT as there is a mimister regulation on its content, where network operators with OTT shall report to the ministry and the regulatory body about the form of their cooperation. The problem is that until now we have not received reports of the OTT Cooperation Agreement review so that we do not know it is beneficial or detrimental to the operator," he said.

Ridwan added that the operators themselves do not need to be frightened by OTT as in Indonesia has given a Broadband Plan's direction signal on what is needed by the community such as e-health, e-gov, e-deucation, and others.

"The problem is that operators do not support local developers. Take a look at any of its marketing activities, they are more encouraging the global OTT applications," he said.

XL Director of Management Services Ongki Kurniawan admitted that negotiating with global OTT players like Facebook, Google, and others are more difficult than local players. "But there is always a chance to see the common needds. We can do that with Facebook yesterday," he said.

As previously noted that in 2013 the government will highlight five important aspects of ITT and operator's cooperation including the quality of service which become a part of the user protection, also security and privacy id needed.

Then the user's data should not be misused, tax and non-tax burden should be borne equitably, not only by the telecommunication operators. Indonesian operators arebreported to provide Rp 2.5 trillion to foreign OTT. (es)