Monthly Archives: March 2012

Government aims to strengthen cyber security defense

The Communications and Information Ministry looks to strengthen the country’s defense against cyber threats by learning from other countries’ experiences in an international conference on Internet security, slated to be held in Bali from March 25-31.

“The event is important to raise our awareness about Internet crimes. Ignorance often makes us easy to fall prey to Internet crimes. Therefore, we need to share experiences [in fighting Internet crimes],” said Rudi Lumanto, chairman of the Indonesia Security Incident Response Team on Internet Infrastructure (ID-SIRTII) on Tuesday.

The Internet security conference is part of the Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team Annual General Meeting 2012 and the Technical Colloquium Forum for Incident Response and Security Teams 2012.

Rudi cited a report that found there were 1.5 million attacks targeting government’s sites everyday.

“For example, an attack could hit our country’s banking sectors’ Internet sites that would cause a system breakdown and cause significant losses in the business sector,” he said.

Muhammad Salman, another ID-SIRTII official, said that the government needed to protect other key sectors, like transportation, energy and the military.

Indonesia joined the International Forum for Incident Response and Security Teams in 2011. The forum, consisting of 22 countries, was established in 2003.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/03/20/government-aims-strengthen-cyber-security-defense.html

News from the Jakarta Post

ICT business may reach $4.5 billion in 2015

The quadrupling of Internet users in Indonesia by 2016 will translate into a US$4.5 billion business opportunity for not only mobile operators, but also other companies providing Internet-based services to consumers and enterprises, suggests a recent study.

A study by Frost and Sullivan predicts that the number of Internet users in Indonesia will rocket from 40 million in 2011 to 175 million by 2016. The sharp increase is accompanied by a boom in data connection subscribers — a number which is expected to leap from 52 million in 2011 to 167 million in 2016.

“Of the 167 million, 109 million will be on smartphones, while the remaining 22 million will be on tablets and large screen devices,” Jayesh Easwaramony, Frost and Sullivan Asia Pacific vice president for ICT practices, said recently.

He added that the large influx in Internet and data usage, spurred by the increasingly ubiquitous presence of smart devices, necessitated telecommunication operators to beef up infrastructure related to fixed broadband and 3G/Long Term Evolution (LTE).

Overall, the Asia Pacific fixed broadband market is expected to grow to 375 million users in 2015 or 76 percent more than 2011 figures. The 3G/LTE market is also forecast to swell by 168 percent to 1.25 billion users within the next three years.

“As more and more people use mobile broadband, they want to access the same services at home,” he commented on the rise of fixed broadband needs. Jayesh added that to fully monetize these trends, operators had to provide digital services that would ride upon the information highway.

“It is about creating the right service environment to allow the infrastructure to be monetized well,” he said, adding that the “big business potential” of ICT service-provision was not reserved for operators only.

Frost and Sullivan forecast that the market potential of providing enterprises with ICT services in Indonesia would touch US$3 billion (Rp by 27.3 trillion) in 2015, while the market potential for consumer services is estimated at about US$1.5 billion.

According to Jayesh, a prospective business for ICT players is cloud computing services, which is also expected to hit the mainstream in the Asia Pacific region.

“Cloud computing is becoming the fastest growing business in ICT, and it is changing the way people look at information technology [IT],” he said, adding that cloud computing was a cost-efficient solution for data storage.

On the consumer side, e-commerce was gleaming with promise, he noted. The next wave of e-commerce, however, would be mobile-based instead of desktop-based.

Indonesia currently has several large online stores, such as tokobagus.com, although many entrepreneurs and buyers have flocked to local online community site kaskus.us, in addition to Facebook.

However, the lack of widespread e-payment systems and smartphones have hampered the growth of mobile e-commerce, which, many have pointed out, was a more effective marketing tool.

According to Jayesh, e-commerce did not only encompass mobile advertisements, but also marketing tactics such as informing consumers via their mobile phones about current promotions as they browse through real sticks-and-bricks stores.

“Such digital engagement is a combination of online social networking, location-based detection and mobile connection. This is really the way to engage with customers,” he said, adding that providing location-specific information would also benefit news sites.

Notable news outlets, such as Indonesia’s largest newspaper Kompas, and the earliest news portal, Detik.com, are accessible via mobile. However, the stories they serve on their main pages are commonly general news updates.

Although trends such as cloud computing and location-based services would benefit telecommunications, the current trend of changing consumer communication behavior will leave revenues from short text messages (SMS) and voice services in decline.

Besides SMS, Indonesians have grown adept at communicating via applications such as BlackBerry Messenger and WhatsApp, in addition to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

These modes of communication are popular since consumers do not incur additional costs if they are subscribers of mobile data plans.

“Operators need to be part of all forms of communication. Otherwise, they cannot be called a communication service provider,” Jayesh noted.

Telkomsel has launched a data package that would allow customers have unlimited use of Skype, a voice over Internet protocol software application, through their mobile phones.

Yet, an issue which would still hound the Internet ecosystem, especially as it grows richer in services, is security.

“I don’t think there will be easy answers to solve the security problem,” Jayesh said. “We’ll have to seen how the industry solves this problem.”

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/03/06/ict-business-may-reach-45-billion-2015.html

News from the Jakarta Post

200 SMEs join ICT training

DENPASAR:  As many as 200 small and medium enterprises participated in an information and communication technology (ICT) training, organized by the city’s administration.

The city’s Cooperatives, Small and Medium Enterprises Agency head, Luh Gede Hariasih, said the event was aimed at expanding the SMEs’ network and improving their skills in utilizing information technology.

“Computerization can help SMEs to operate in more effective and efficient ways,” Hariasih claimed.

“In this era of globalization, the presence of the Internet has virtually destroyed all the traditional barriers between people and countries. Local SMEs must gain the capacity to use this new technology to sharpen their competitive advantage and gain greater access to the market,” he said.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/03/14/200-smes-join-ict-training.html

News from the Jakarta Post

Shopping with your fingertips

Comparing prices and buying products online, especially laptops or mobile phones, might be puzzling for some, but now Telunjuk.com has come to the rescue.

“Telunjuk.com is a search engine and comparison website that aims to give a new and deeper experience of online shopping for smart shoppers in Indonesia,” said the website founder Redya Febriyanto.

Users could find and compare prices between products based on brand, specification, and price range. The website doesn’t sell products, but it points at the online stores that sell them. Currently users could search for three kinds of product: laptops, mobile phones and airplane tickets.

The inspiration came from Redya’s personal experience. When he was browsing gadgets online, he felt that it was quite troublesome and unfriendly to search devices that matched his need.

Redya then created automatic-crawling technology, the system behind Telunjuk, which in Bahasa Indonesia means “index finger”, for his personal needs. He thinks that the system can help other people. He asked his friend, Hanindia Narendrata Rahiesa, who also used the system, to form PT Telunjuk Komputasi Indonesia.

To find laptops or mobile phones, users have to fill the description based on what kind of device they need. After choosing a specification for a laptop or mobile phone, users will then see a list of online stores with the product’s price.

Users can sort the list by price and can see which store has the cheapest on offer. By clicking the detail button, users can see and contact the store.

On the search page, there is related information about a review of the product and its price movement. There is also a list about the newest or popular products.

Merchants can wait for Telunjuk.com to find them or they can register by sending an email to the website administrator.

For airplane tickets, users can search flights by routes and dates. There will be a list of flights sorted by the earliest schedule. To book the ticket, users will be driven to the airline’s website.

Most of the features on the website can be accessed without registering, except the PriceAlert feature. It helps to monitor the brand’s price and will send a notification if the price decreases so that it falls within range of the user’s budget.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/03/18/shopping-with-your-fingertips.html

News from the Jakarta post

 

Magic goes digital

Jin Hyo-beom, a professional magician based in Gwangju, was tired of doing the same old magic tricks on stage.

But the 30-year-old illusionist had an idea ― magic tricks for digital devices such as smartphones and tablet PCs.

The iPhone and iPad have become the main tools for Jin’s acts on stage. With the gadgets, he can conjure up pretty much everything from a cup of coffee to a bunch of roses. People love the idea of turning the same IT products in their hands into magic instruments, Jin said.

“People were surprised to see that their IT devices can do magic and wanted to learn the tricks behind it,” Jin, one of the leading figures in media magic, told The Korea Herald.

Jin doesn’t just want to share his world of media magic with people on stage. He has developed smartphone apps for people wanting to do simple magic tricks with their friends.

“People can do small but surprising tricks by using iPhone’s innovative functions such as the microphone, touch screen and gravity sensor,” he said.

Last year, Jin even launched an app-developing company to increase interest in magic.

The magician developed six apps including popular “Into the Phones” and “Magic School.” Magic School, which provides a series of video lessons, was a hit. The paid app now has around 30,000 subscribers in Korea.

The methods behind magic are no longer always a secret thanks to multimedia and a growing internet market.

There are hundreds of apps and websites that offer video-lessons, helping people learn tricks by themselves.

“I hope people become more familiar with magic and learn more magic skills without having to go to magic classes. I also hope people to have the courage do something special in front of their friends simply with IT devices,” Jin said.

The country’s IT giants and telecom companies are also using magic’s “wow factor” to sell their products. Early this year, Samsung Electronics employed David Copperfield to advertize its Smart TV series.

“The new Smart TV now has state-of-the-art technology like gesture recognition software that lets people reduce volume or change channels without using the remote control. The TV also recognizes the human voice so that people can turn off the TV by simply saying the word, just like magic,” a PR official at Samsung Electronics said.

LG Telecom named its 3G service “Oz,” an obvious reference to “The Wizard of Oz,” and SK Telecom carried out a nationwide campaign to boost its corporate image with “Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo” from the film “Cinderella.”

Observers say that companies are using magic because it is an easy way to convey complicated technological development.

“Many people would never understand the principles behind these technological developments appearing almost every day. Companies just label it as ‘magic,’” Kang Hyeong-dong, professor of the magic department at Donga Injae University in Yeongam, South Jeolla Province. The university is the first in the world to establish a magic department to nurture professional magicians.

Magic also saw renewed popularity here when Choi Hyun-woo, one of Korea’s top magicians, appeared on a number of programs produced by a new cable channel. Choi currently hosts “Magic Hole” featuring celebrities and magicians from all over the world.

“This is the first regular TV program about magic in Korea. For the audience, the program will give the impression that magic is no longer entertainment only for holidays or special days; that it can be a part of your lives,” Choi said in a telephone interview.

K-pop stars have latched onto magic as well. Girls’ Generation had a hit with “Tell Me Your Wish” in 2009 while Brown Eyed Girls released “Abracadabra.”

“Magic itself makes the impossible possible. I think that many people, particularly in this difficult economic situation, are mesmerized with magic, believing that things will get better like magic,” Kang said.

Fantasy films like “Harry Potter” and “Lord of the Rings” have also played their part in attracting people to magic.

“Korean magicians began to get the spotlight from international events with their distinctive manipulation skills or incomparably fast hand-tricks,” professor Kang said.

But magic acts based on human skill and physics have long been an art form in Europe. And magicians in Korea are putting efforts into developing their performances into art.

“If not, Korean artists would be replaced by hard-working magicians in Thailand and China,” Kang said.

What makes Korean magic unique is that it has collaborated with education programs.

Teachers and medical doctors started to learn magic for teaching students and treating patients from 2006, Kang said. EBS, the country’s educational broadcaster, also airs a show called “Magic English,” featuring native speakers teaching English with magic tricks.

Some teachers established a club so that they could learn magic together. The National Association of Magic Learning Teachers currently has about 2,400 members across the country. The club, recognized by the Education Ministry, offers a series of online magic classes for teachers trying to keep the attention of students during classes, according to reports.

Magicians admit that there is nothing supernatural about what they do. But the “magic” is about giving people a taste of having their dreams come true.

“Koreans, in particular, are trying to discover the secrets behind magic tricks,” star magician Choi said.

“Maybe everyone knows that magic is just an illusion, but I want to give people a moment to seek dreams and fantasy and get out of reality during the show”

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/20103/16/magic-goes-digital.html

News from the Jakarta post

 

More partnerships on the horizon for Yahoo! Indonesia

Yahoo! Indonesia is looking to sharpen the market niche of their media properties and forge new partnerships with media outlets this year to fortify their Internet services, a company director says.

Roy Arnold Simangunsong, Yahoo! Indonesia’s country ambassador and sales director, said that the Internet company would launch better-positioned properties into the market this year.

Yahoo! Indonesia currently has two well-established properties, Yahoo! Indonesia News and Yahoo! Indonesia OMG, which aggregates an assortment of news feeds from several media outlets, including local news wire Antara.

“We will focus on the female niche segment,” Roy told The Jakarta Post.

Roy added that the realignment of channels belonging to Yahoo! Indonesia, in addition to developing content-acquisition strategies, was the “underlying basis in growing our media properties”.

“To make this achievable, we are also looking into partnerships with different media that could feed us with information,” he said, adding that the company was seeking to partner with offline media, including from print and television. That would increase the number of news feeds “adjusted to the media properties that we have”.

However, he declined to name the companies that discussions were taking place with.

Instead of solely appealing to its growing Internet audience that exceeds 40 million people, rolling out new and improved products and properties is part of Yahoo! Indonesia’s strategy to attract more advertisers, given that the digital media is increasingly becoming part and parcel of marketing tactics.

Besides telecommunication operators and other technological companies, Yahoo! Indonesia sought to attract advertisement placements from firms in the automotive and fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) sectors, as well as banking and finance industries.

Research firm Frost and Sullivan forecasts vehicle sales to grow 6.5 percent this year to 948,500, which could be attributable to the stable economy, positive buyer sentiments and the introduction of new car models.

“Based on what we’ve seen last year, these industries are within the top five or six [advertisers],” Roy said.

As for overall business this year, Roy said that Yahoo! Indonesia’s growth would remain “quite agreeable”.

He said that Yahoo! Indonesia was visited by 70 percent of Internet users last year, based on Comscore data. The data also shows that their other products, such as mail and messenger, as well as properties including Yahoo! Indonesia OMG, were leaders in their field.

Web information company Alexa ranks Yahoo! as the fourth-most visited site in Indonesia, with search engine Google the most popular website. Google, however, has yet to set up an office in Indonesia.

“We see that we can achieve double-to-triple digit growth for our overall business growth,” he said.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/03/02/more-partnerships-horizon-yahoo-indonesia.html

News from the Jakarta Post

Minister dubs Cimahi as animation, film, creative industry area

Jakarta PostResearch and Technology Minister Gusti Muhammad Hatta on Monday dubbed Cimahi, West Java, as an area of creative industry, animation and film, making it the only city in Indonesia which has an integrated creative center for information and technology (IT).

Gusti said that he would support Cimahi as a creative center for IT so that it would contribute to the growing creative industry in Indonesia.

“We will support it by [generating] policies and funding. We will approach businessmen and explain to them that this is a promising business,” Gusti said after the inauguration of the Baros IT Center in Cimahi, which was attended by West Java Governor Ahmad Heryawan and Cimahi Mayor Itoc Tochija.

Gusti said that the ministry had allocated up to Rp 26.3 billion for research, including for the empowerment of the national innovation system and “technopreneurship” in West Java.

Cimahi Creative Association (CCA) member Rudy Suteja said that the association already had 800 members. An animation movie called Historia Kelana, made by Cimahi creators, has already been broadcast on a private TV channel.

“We hope that every party realizes that national products also sell,” Rudy said. (swd)

 

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/03/05/minister-dubs-cimahi-animation-film-creative-industry-area.html

 

News from the Jakarta Post

Telecom operators struggle to expand e-wallet services

Mobile phone operators may be expanding the number of e-wallet merchants, but strategic positioning of those services is the real key to getting more people to use the facility and move closer toward aspirations for a “cashless society”.

Telkomsel, Indonesia’s largest mobile phone operator, aims to increase the number of people using their e-wallet services by 25 percent this year, or roughly equal to 10 million users. “The number of people using Telkomsel e-money facilities, consisting of T-Cash and Tap-Izzy, has only amounted to 8 million users,” Telkomsel spokesman Ricardo Indra told The Jakarta Post.

However, the number of subscribers is conspicuously less than the total size of the operator’s mobile phone service users, which shot past 100 million last year.

Introduced in 2007, T-Cash enables its subscribers to perform micro-payments below Rp 1 million (US$111) from their accounts through short text messages. The transaction value limit is based on the Bank Indonesia regulation on e-money. Bank Indonesia has also campaigned for the use of e-money in their effort to realize a cashless society.

Tap-Izy, on the other hand, uses a SIM card equipped with Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology, allowing people to tap their phones on devices available at cashiers when making payments.

In addition to the relatively low number of users, the use of e-wallets has been limited as well, given that this payment system is mostly used for phone credit top up.

According to Ricardo, the e-wallet facilities were mostly used by subscribers between 25 to 40 years old who live in “small cities at the district level”.

Yessie D. Yosetya, senior general manager for M-Payment at mobile phone operator XL, added that their e-wallet facility, XL Tunai, was largely used for mobile phone credit purchases “with an average credit top up of Rp 50,000”.

“The use of electronic money is still in the introductory stage. Hence, people are not yet fully familiar with the service. This is what we hope to improve in the future,” she added.

Djarot Handoko, spokesman for mobile phone operator Indosat, added that educating people on the use of the e-wallet was one of the factors in boosting its use by society.

PT Indosat runs an e-wallet service, which they call DompetKu.

“There are plenty of factors which could spur the growth of mobile payment, starting from educating and informing the public, increasing the number of merchants, to enriching the features of the service,” he told the Post.

Besides cooperating with state-owned electric company PT PLN, Indosat is also working with Alfamart mini markets for their DompetKu service. XL has collaborated with around 10 merchants while Telkomsel has worked with at least seven types of partners, including Indomaret mini markets and Cinema 21 for Tap-Izy.

Technology observer Andy Zain, however, pointed out that operators had to make e-wallet services available at more strategic places beyond minimarkets.

“People can pay by cash, debit card or credit card at minimarkets, and not necessarily with e-wallets from operators,” he said, adding that paying by SMS at certain places was a hassle instead.

He added that operators have to spot “usage scenarios” — activities which people found suitable to make payments through mobile phones.

“A benefit of mobile payments is that they are secure and can be done from remote areas. These factors are more suitable for money transfers,” he added.

He further said that operators should inform the public more on where people could top up their accounts, such as through ATMs. “Operators must also make their services visible at touch points,” he noted.

He added that an ideal way to get people using mobile e-wallets is to integrate the wallet with phone credits, thereby eliminating the need for people to first subscribe to e-wallet services.

“However, this is not legally approved because the valid payment method is money, not phone credit,” he said.

Operators, however, will continue betting on their e-wallet services.

“This is in line with global trends,” Ricardo said, pointing out mobile wallet trends for micro-payment in Philippines, as well as other Asian and European countries where the technology is used for paying public transport fees.

“Telkomsel views that this potential could also be applied in Indonesia in the near future,” he commented.

GCash, from Philippines-based telecom Globe, could also be used for remittance transfer to facilitate the approximately 200,000 Filipinos living and working in Qatar, their website mentioned.

XL has plans to expand their services this year, such as enabling the transfer of money between XL Tunai users, on top of increasing their number of merchants.

“XL is developing this service [sending money] which is set for launch by April 2012 at the latest,” Yessie said.

Telkomsel will up their game as well by expanding their merchant list.

“In the near future, Alfamart stores will also make available payments using Tap-Izy so that customers would receive service from around 1,500 Tap-Izy counters in total,” Ricardo said.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/02/27/telecom-operators-struggle-expand-e-wallet-services.html

News from the Jakarta Post

Bakrie Telecom rating lowered on growing risk

Fitch Ratings has downgraded Indonesia-based PT Bakrie Telecom’s (BTEL) long-term foreign- and local-currency issuer default ratings to “CCC” from “B”.

The agency has also downgraded the senior unsecured rating to “CCC” from “B”. The recovery rating remains at “RR4”.

The ratings agency said in a statement released on Wednesday that the downgrade reflected the growing liquidity risks BTEL faces with its Rp 650 billion bond maturing on Sept. 4, 2012, and finance lease obligation payments of Rp 660 billion in 2012. Cash and equivalents were only Rp 250 billion at the end of 2011 and Fitch does not expect the company to generate sufficient cash to meet its obligations.

BTEL is currently negotiating with foreign banks to raise refinancing loans. However, the company’s high leverage and poor trading results meant it was likely to breach the financial covenants to which it was obligated, Fitch said.

BTEL’s revenue declined 3 percent year-on-year (YOY) in 2011, following declining growth of 0.8 percent and 24.5 percent in 2010 and 2009, respectively. If the company is unable to generate revenue growth and free cash flow, Fitch expects the company to breach its covenants of 4x leverage and 2.5x interest coverage.

The company is struggling with its CDMA service to compete with the dominant GSM product in Indonesia’s telecommunications market. Prior to 2010, BTEL experienced robust subscriber and revenue growth. Since then, however, revenue growth has been slower than that of its four largest telco competitors. Despite its success in maintaining subscriber growth (2011: 19.5 percent, 2010: 22.8 percent), deteriorating average revenue per user led to a fall in its revenue market share among the five largest telcos, to 3.5 percent in 2011 from 3.8 percent
in 2010.

The BWA (broadband wireless access) service launched in June 2010 was initially expected to boost the company’s revenue growth and compensate for the stagnant growth in voice and SMS revenue.

Although BWA revenue grew sharply in the third quarter last year compared to the same period in 2010, this product had yet to contribute significantly to BTEL’s revenue — just 4.23 percent in 2011, Fitch added.

The company forecasts the BWA’s revenue contribution will grow to 10 percent of total revenue by the end of 2013.

Fitch may downgrade further if BTEL breaches its financial covenants, or if the company does not have a committed facility or an injection of funds by early June 2012 to meet the Rp 650 billion maturity due in September 2012.

An upgrade would be contingent on improvements in both its liquidity and trading position which, given the current tough market conditions, will be a challenge.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2012/03/01/bakrie-telecom-rating-lowered-growing-risk.html

News from the Jakarta POST