We have a short meetup with Filipina blogger Armina at the Plaza Senayan the other day along with her husband Yuda and 2 kids.
Her husband mentioned that they were employing a wifi village arrangement in their area. Since broadband is still expensive here in Indonesia, what he did was signed up for a SoHo (Small Office, Home Office) package from the ISP. It cost him about 2 Million Rupiahs (roughly Php11,000) a month and the connection speed were just in the hundreds of Kbps.
However, since the SoHo package allows the subscriber of up to 40 workstations connected to it, he sublet his connection via Wifi. before upgrading to the business package, he surveyed and asked around if enough people are interested in their area. Once he has the numbers, he’ll hook up an access point and buy the new customer a wifi antenna receiver hooked up on a bamboo pole outside the house.
For every additional customer he gets, he’ll add more wifi access points and hook them up into the network. Yuda charges about Rp100,000 (Php500+) for the connection cost and it’s unlimited. Some residential cable internet rates can go up to USD$60 for 64/64Kbps upstream and downstream — and that doesn’t include cable TV charges. So, this wifi village idea is cheap!
Very nice business model in a huge city where broadband is scarce and expensive. Reminds me of WiFi ng Bayan. Are they still operating?
What’s the latest – has the plan gone ahead? I’ll be spending time in Jakarta soon and trying to find a decent wifi connection.
Off Topic: So almost all Indonesians are millionaire? hehehe…
I think that idea is feasible in our area. As per some of my neighbors, nobody is using broadband connection in my area except me. hehe. Why? Probably most of them are not technology inclined. Imagine internet cafes using dialup! hehe… I once entered a cafe when my connection is out and I asked the owner what’s their connection speed and he said 56KBPS! wow, that’s dialup!
Anyway, have a safe trip back home.
There’s WiFi ng Bayan? I’ve never of this before. I hope it’s not powered by Smart Bro, though. ;)
Reminds me of my days in Mumbai, India – back in 2001 – our local cable operator did the same thing.
He has expanded considerably now spanning over 10 kms!
Mind you, this isn’t wireless that I am talking about, it was wired!
All LAN … :-)
I was waiting for Wimax before I do that :-)