Answers to questions, such as typical configurations providing the service, will be described. Some of these services may be run without any government license. The receive-only IP VSAT service is one of these.A one-way receive-only IP-based DVB VSAT service may be obtained for US$33-270 per month. Two-way DVB/RCS VSAT service is around US$700-800 monthly including the monthly VSAT rental and maintenance fee.
Having IP-based broadband backbone will enable many added value services, such as neighborhood or city-wide networks through WiFi (local broadband) 2.4GHz infrastructure and VoIP (voice over Internet protocol) community networks. These community based services are described below.
Introduction
A typical question is “What would be the low cost dedicated IP solution for rural/remote sites or small cities?”If one looks for the solution through Indonesian telecomm, one might find a charge of US$1 per hour through the carrier's dial-up services at 08 098 9999 numbers.
If one looks for dedicated IP connection to the Internet in remote Indonesia through an Indonesian telecomm service, one might find the calculation would be much simpler, i.e., 24 hours times 30 days times US$1/hour. Thus, the dedicated IP connection cost would be in the range of US$720/month. We hope the speed reaches the maximum dial-up speed of 56Kbps, which is the upper limit for most cases in remote / small cities.
To be honest, US$600-800/month for dedicated Internet connection would make teh service unaffordable for most Indonesians. Thus, the common solution would be shared access cost through neighborhood networks, school networks, office networks and so on to obtain an affordable US$15-30/month/house for 24 hours Internet connection. The operating cost calculation is quite straightforward, the monthly dedicated Internet connection cost (US$600-800/month) divided by the number of schools/neighbors/offices. A typical 20-30 neighborhood is sufficient to reduce the monthly cost to an affordable US$15-30 for individual users/households.
A neighborhood network is basically a cyber café technology with a proxy server or Network Address Translator (NAT) box to share a single Internet access to many computers behind the NAT box. Commonly used UTP (LAN) cables run across the neighborhood to connect all computers. Since UTP cable is limited to 100-200 meters, we normally put a hub or switch box every 100-200 meters, to act as a repeater for the LAN cables to reach longer distances.
Neighborhood networks have been a common solution for many Indonesian residential areas. Unfortunately, the government has been very slow in responding to the regulatory framework and has been considering such networks as not legal (but not really illegal).
In some cases, we need to deploy a city wide area network. A typical city wide area network must cover an area with a radius of 5-15 km (or about 25-150 km square). UTP / LAN based technology is not sufficient to cover such ranges. We normally used WiFi 2.4GHz equipments to do the tasks. Taiwanese low cost WiFi 2.4GHz is normally designed for indoor usage. Most of us enclose such equipment in plastics boxes, replace the default antenna using a high gain parabolic antenna and set it for 5-15 km outdoor operations.
The individual charges can be extremely low for Internet connection to schools through city wide area networks. Per school Internet access would cost about US$40-70/month by sharing the backbone access with several schools within the city. Considering typical schools would have 500-1,000 students, the final operating cost as well as investment for buying computers would be around US$0.20-0.50/student /month. The return on investment for the computer equipment would be around one to two years time.
The monthly cost in getting the community access as well as school access to the Internet can be reduced significantly to sub-US$1 level per month per student. The whole investment may be paid back within 1-2 years time. The most important aspect of the whole initiative is that communities and the schools don’t have to rely on government funding or loans from the World Bank and IMF.
Thus, this plan solves most of our problems in getting low cost (and self-financed) access for neighborhood and city wide area networks. Most of the technology components are very well documented and can be downloaded from such sites as, http://www.apjii.or.id/onno/, http://sandbox.bellanet.org/~onno/, http://www.apc.org/tiki/, and http://www.thewirelessroadshow.org.
Having solved the problem of how to build and finance the neighborhood and city wide area network, our next task is to find the solution for low cost national and international access. There are basically two (2) major competing technologies, i.e. satellite based and fiber optic based backbone infrastructure.
In major cities, it is quite easy to find the fiber optics backbone provided by Indonesian Telkom or XL (one of the Indonesian cellular operator).
Due to bureaucratic reasons and service commitment, many of us would prefer to use XL’s fiber optics backbone infrastructure, ensuring high quality, high capacity, and reliable services. Combined with fixed wireless transmissions, VSAT, and submarine fiber optics, the network spans across Java, Bali, Lombok, Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and Singapore (as Business Solution’s international Leased Line gateway).
Unfortunately, in many areas of Indonesian, it would be difficult to get access to fiber optics backbone. Thus, the solution would be satellite based backbone infrastructure. The cost structure must remain about US$600-800 per installation to reach an affordable US$15-30 / month end user charges. In the next section, I will describe the situation with satellite based IP backbone in Indonesia. To be honest, some of these activities are currently considered as not legal. Although, it is not illegal either.