Mobile Browsing Gains Popularity in Indonesia

Jakarta Globe, Putri Prameshwari & Ismira Lutfia, July 01, 2010

Indonesia is now the number one user of Opera Mini, a browser which allows mobile phones to access the Internet. Most users access the Internet on their phones between 8 p.m. and midnight. (JG Photo)

With standard Internet service still unavailable in much of Indonesia, the spread of digital information relies on mobile browsers, despite the limited connectivity.

As an example, footage from a homemade sex video involving top Indonesian celebrities was rapidly distributed among mobile-phone users a few weeks ago, most of them apparently having no trouble downloading it from the Internet.

Valens Riyadi, of the Indonesian Internet Service Providers Association, said that aside from the debate on whether the Net should be restricted or not, mobile Internet users in the country would keep growing in number in the coming years.

“Currently, 80 percent of cellphone users in Indonesia have access to data service,” he said.

Indonesia was recently named the country with the most users of Opera Mini, the mobile version of the Norway-based Opera Internet browser.

In a statement on Opera’s Web site, cofounder Jon von Tetzchner said Indonesia for the first time ranked first among Opera Mini users from May 2009 to May 2010, displacing Russia from the No. 1 spot, which it had held for two years.

Since May 2009, Von Tetzchner said, the number of Opera Mini users across the world had increased by more than 140 percent to 61.4 million. Indonesia had one of the highest growth rates at 317 percent.

According to the report “Opera: State of the Mobile Web, May 2010,” the most visited Web site in Indonesia is social-networking platform Facebook, followed by search engine Google.com and news portal Detik.com.

Most Indonesian users, it said, browsed the Internet from 8 p.m. to midnight, and 23 percent were aged between 20 and 24 years.

“As companies look to make money from mobile data and mobile Web services, understanding the nocturnal habits of mobile Web users might help better provision bandwidth and provide additional rationale to ensure uptime during what are typically minimally staffed hours,” Von Tetzchner said.

Valens said social media would continue to be favorite browsing destinations for most Indonesians, especially those who were more mobile.

“Web sites like Facebook and YouTube, like it or not, are still dominating Internet use,” he said, adding that almost everyone now can turn to these Web sites to seek a variety of information.

Muhammad Jumadi, secretary general of the Indonesia Telecommunications Users Group, said Opera’s findings showed that the need for Internet access had become more significant for local users.

“Operators should take this opportunity to provide the service that suits the needs of today’s telecommunications users,” Jumadi said, adding that the government should also support operators in developing better infrastructure. “This shows that what people need is not just text and voice communication — they also need to access data.”

Data from the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology’s Directorate of Post and Telecommunications showed that Internet penetration in Indonesia had reached 14.6 percent by last December, while cell-phone users accounted for 66.3 percent of the total population during the same time.

Koesmarihati, a member of the ministry’s study group on telecommunications regulation, said at a Japan-Indonesia Information and Communications Technology symposium on Monday that the government planned to complete 100 percent of its Universal Service Obligation program by 2014.

This would make ICT available in every village, in border areas, on the outermost islands, and in other non-commercial areas.