Tag Archives: Heru Sutadi
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Lower Mobile Prices: Through Profit Regulation or Competition?
By Divakar Goswami (LIRNEasia) Bisnis Indonesia (Leading financial paper of Indonesia): OpEd (In Bahasa) January 10, 2007
Mobile talk is not cheap in Indonesia. Despite limited competition, mobile calling prices are among the highest in Asia. Only fixed wireline service, where PT Telkom has a de facto monopoly, sees calling prices to be among the lowest in the region as they are rigidly regulated by the government. But as everyone knows, it is difficult to get a fixed line and the quality is poor.
It is therefore not surprising that policymakers and regulators in Indonesia have become impatient with the results of competition and started to voice their resentment of the high profits being declared by the private telecom companies.
Jos Luhukay, a member of the ICT National Committee tasked to study high Internet tariffs, recently argued that operators’ income is too high at the expense of users. “Is it fair? What if the profit margin is slightly lowered but the distribution of services is more widespread?” he said.
Along similar lines, Heru Sutadi, a commissioner from the Indonesian regulator BRTI suggested in Bisnis Indonesia on July 26 that mobile operators’ EBITDA margin were too high and needed to be reduced. The thinking seems ..read more
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