Indonesia’s Internet service providers have come together to issue a terrifying ultimatum to the government: provide legal clarity on Internet frequency usage or we will be forced to shut down Indonesia’s internet.
On Tuesday, as reported in Detik.com, 30 of the nation’s technology advocates and representatives of major ISPs held a meeting at the offices of PT Indosat Mega Media (IM2) and concluded that the closure of all of the country’s ISPs might need to happen in the next week or two.
Why would the country’s ISPs threaten such a thing? Because they don’t want to end up like the former president director of IM2, Indar Atmanto. Indar was sentenced to 4 years in jail in 2013 by the country’s anti-corruption court due to IM2’s failure to pay fees for a 3G telecommunications license.
Indar’s defense argued that the license for frequency radio band 2.1 GHz had already been given to IM2’s parent company, Indosat, and that IM2’s use of the frequency had already been approved by the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology (which sided with IM2 during the case). The government argued that Indosat got a special discounted rate on the frequency license because it is a partially state-owned company, and its extension to IM2 (which is technically a private company) was illegal and cost the state Rp 1.36 trillion.
Indar’s sentence was later increased to 8 years and the country’s Supreme Court declined to hear his final appeal.
The heads of many of Indonesia’s internet service providers said they were afraid of running afoul of the same laws, since their companies utilize similar license sharing schemes. They note that both the Ministry of Information and Communications Technology and the Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory Body (BRTI) knew and approved of IM2’s use of the 2.1 Ghz frequency and still Indar ended up in jail.
“We will send a letter to the Communications and Information Technology this week to inquire about the status of the licenses granted to us and whether the government still thinks they are valid or not,” said Semmy Pangerapan, chairman of the Indonesian Internet Service Providers Association (APJII) .
“We will also send a letter to ask for a clarification from the Supreme Court, asking if the license owned by other ISPs can be similarly impacted. Because most ISPs use the same business model as IM2 and Indosat,” he said at the meeting.
Semmy and the other representatives at Tuesday’s meeting said they would act in solidarity to support Indar and follow through with the shutdown of their services if legal clarity was not provided soon.
