Soon after Netflix’s arrival into Indonesia on January 2016, Telkom, the country’s biggest telecommunications company, decided to unilaterally block the US-based streaming service on its home internet and mobile networks.
Part of their reason was that Netflix did not adhere to Indonesian regulations, such as for the presence of nudity and sex scenes (or “pornography”, as some conservatives would describe it) in their shows and movies, but some also suspected that Telkom was merely trying to protect their own business interests.
It seems Telkom is finally willing to work with the global streaming giant. According to reports, Netflix is now in discussions with the state-owned telco to have their service unblocked for customers of Telkom’s home internet service Indihome.
“If the two parties agree to the terms and conditions, Telkom will unblock Netflix as soon as possible,” said Telkom Consumer Service Director Dian Rachmawan, as quoted by Merdeka today.
Part of those terms, added Dian, includes Netflix censoring or simply not including objectionable content for their Indonesia service. She said it’s likely that Netflix will adhere to Indonesia’s regulations from now on.
Telkom says there are 1.9 million Indihome customers in Indonesia.
Many Indihome customers said they switched to other ISPs following Telkom’s unilateral block of Netflix, but doing so also created a lot of problems as Telkom’s internet package comes bundled with other services.
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