Syahrial Ali's Blog

If we read the BWA tender document, it’s mentioned that one of the requirement is the local content portion. It should be 20% with 35% CAPEX. However, up until now, no local vendor is ready. Shall the tender will be postponed?

Last week, Hariff, one of the company which will manufacture the BWA equipment performed a trial in Serpong. The trial was not so successful. It can only serve 15 subscribers with the coverage of only 6 km. This is far from International standard which should serve at least 100 subscribers.

Due to this fact, many parties asked to postpone the tender. They argued that there will be some problem when thender continues. The winner will have to wait the local vendor readiness, meanwhile they have to spectrum levy.  So, shoould we wait the local vendor readiness? For how long?

However, the tender process is still on going right now. There is no sign to postpone it.

Indonesia Reaearch and Technology Minister, Mr. Kusmayanto Kadiman in one occasion said the BWA should not wait for the local readiness. As the tender is in progress, there are several ways out to do. When the winners will be assigned as they are, but the deployment will be delayed. Other soliution is to change the local content requirement.

Special respect shall be addressed to the regulator who have mention the local content requirement in tender document to give special treat to local industry. However, this good will was not responded well by local industry. What’s a pity.

I personally support for tender continuity. Just give the time limit for local vendor, when they are still not ready, the exception rule shall be applied. We don’t want to wait too long for new technology implementation. Look other neighbour countries, such as Malaysia and even East Timor, they have implemented WiMAX.

Indonesian BWA’s Tender attracts many companies. The participants reach 73 companies. They consist of various telecommunication related business from cellular telecommunication network provider (Bakrie, Smart telecom, Indosat), Internet Service Provider (Centrin), Telecommunication supplier and IT Solution (Berca), fixed network provider (Telkom, Batam Bintan Telekomunikasi), current data service provider (IM2, Elang Mahkota, Citra Sari Makmur, First Media), and many other companies. So, the BWA are the waited for license for many parties.

The maximum total winners will be 30 companies. It is because Indonesia has been divided into 15 regions. And in each region there will be 2 winners (2 blocks of frequency). However, it is easy to predict that the total winners will be less than that figure. The first reason is each participant can bid for more than 1 region. So, they may be the winner in many regions. The second reason is: not all regions are interesting for the investors. At the end we may find out that the total winner will be less than 30.

The total participants are predicted to decrease when the reserved price is announced. The reserved price will be informed on Friday May 15th, 2009. Welcome BWA and welcome WiMAX.

On the January 19th, 2009, Indonesian Minister of Communication and Information Technology has released a decree about Broadband Wireless Access (BWA). According to that document, the tender shall be executed in three months times. It looks like that they want to keep their promise. On their website, Directorate General of Post and Telecommunication informs that the BWA tender process will be started on this April.

There is a modification on the participant’s requirement. Previously, the participants were only from telecommunication network providers and service providers, now they will allow the consortium which are the joint venture of  telecommunication network providers and service providers. The purpose of this rule is to widen the opportunity for companies in broadband wireless access business but have a limited fund or want to share the risks.

It is also mentioned that the ownership limitation of  foreign capital are 49% same with other telecommunication provider using radio with circuit switch and packet switch as well as cable based fixed network with circuit and packet switch.

The BWA tender processes consist of tender document picking, hand in the written statement related with tender document, submission of questions, clarification session. Then, complete documents  hand in including the bid bond, and so on.  It will be 3 steps tender  which consist of one qualification step and 2 seals bids. If the process start  in the 4th week of April, the result will be known in June 2009.   The process will take around 2 months times. So, be ready!!!

A shocking news released by Qualcomm last November when the company decided to stop the UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband) development. The company will now focus on developing Long Term Evolution (LTE) based platforms – which has been backed by the majority of WCDMA based mobile operators as their network upgrade path.

Previously Qualcomm is one of the competing participant in 4G technology development by using its own product, UMB. When they stop the UMB, the race down to LTE and WiMAX. In this race, WiMAX is ahead in the market as several countries have launched their WiMAX systems while LTE is still under trial. LTE will be in commercial in 2009.

As a supporter, Qualcomm is really serious with LTE. They have planned to start sampling multi-mode chips including LTE in the second quarter of 2009. Then, the competition for 4G service is getting high.

Malaysia is a neighbor country of Indonesia. It has 2 separate lands, mainland and north Malaysia in Kalimantan. In several telecommunication regulations, Malaysia is ahead of Indonesia. Let’s see the 3 advanced cases below: 3G, WiMAX and Number Portability.

3G:

Malaysia released 3G licenses since July 2002, far before Indonesia who release the licensed on early 2006. Malaysia allocated 3 blocks, but at the tender the winners were only 2 companies namely: Telekom Malaysia  dan UMTS Sdn Bhd.  Both companies were already operated. On November 2006, the 3rd and 4th licenses were released to TIME dotcom Sdn Bhd and MiTV. (more…)

According to the schedule released by Indonesian Directorate General of Post Telecommunication, the license of broadband wireless access (BWA) will be released by the end of this year. Participants can bring any kind of technology WiMAX, WiBRO or other kind of broadband technology which can run on the specified spectrum frequency. Among them, WiMAX will be the favorable choice.

WiMAX is a broadband wireless technology that is largely supported by the computer and the telecom industry, cost-effective and standard base. It is engineered to deliver the latest type of ubiquitous fixed and mobile services such as VoIP, Information Technology and Video at very low cost. WiMAX systems are able to cover a large geographical area, up to 50 km and to deliver significant bandwidth to end-users up to 72 Mbps (taken from WiMAX forum). (more…)