Indonesia: Next big internet crowd?

I thought the Philippines had a very big problem with over population, it seems 238 million Thais also are in a squeeze :)

Who would have thought dial-up was still being used, and I thought we were behind.

This made my night, I’ll check-out Thailand on the net tonight.

What’s dial up???

Seriously, people still use that?!

And by “2 million have direct access to ISPs” does that mean the other 23 million only go to computer shops for internet access?

Indonesia came in at #10 for eBay.com traffic (the only other Asian country along with India at #7), and also at #5 with Amazon.com

Wow. I wonder, where do we rank for eBay.com and Amazon.com? Probably lower?

Poor broadband infrastructure in Indonesia shouldn’t come as a surprise. They are geographically, politically and economically challenged.

If you look a the map, they are sprawled over a large archipelago. Waters that divide the islands are wide and deep. And since microwave breaks over bodies of water, radio is not an option. Population centers are also spread out and divided by rough terrain. Most ISP rely on VSAT. This is an expensive pipe with really poor latency. And as if that was not bad enough, between December to March, monsoon rains water down their satellite signal.

Politically, they haven’t done well either. As a result, business is difficult to prosper unless equity yields to powers that be. Red tape and corruption can easily cripple a business.

Economically, things aren’t so great either. While the country’s population is one of the highest, 43% of the jobs are in agriculture. Wealth is therefore unevenly distributed. If you’ve managed to visit Jakarta, you would see a few Jaguars, BMWs and Benz’ here and there. But most will be on two or three-wheeled taxis. The working class dines in roadside eateries that would make our JolliJeep look classy.