Jakarta, CNBC Indonesia – The telecommunications industry is not doing well. This was confirmed directly by the Indonesian Telecommunications Providers Association (ATSI)
“The condition of cellular is not good,” explained Deputy General Chair of ATSI, Merza Fachys, discussing the 700 Mhz and 2.6 Ghz Spectrum Auction, Efforts to Encourage 5G Penetration, Jakarta, Monday (13/11/2023).
He explained that revenue growth was not balanced with growth in data traffic or regulatory costs. Currently existing regulatory charges absorb 12% of revenue compared to revenue growth of only 5.6%.
“Operator income is no longer growing as high as in the past. Currently it is growing at around 5.6% on average. Even though BHP’s growth frequency is more than 10%,” said Merza.
For a healthy industry, according to him, regulatory charges charged are below 10%. Free regulation itself has many things in it, but the biggest is related to frequency.
Apart from regulatory charges, telecommunications company revenues are also not balanced with data traffic. Over the last almost 9 years, traffic has increased by 80%.
“High traffic grew by an average of 80% from 2013-2022. It didn’t grow operator income in a balanced way. So it was 5% compared to 80%. What had to be borne by the same was that the income became stagnant,” he said.
During this ‘bloody’ situation, telecommunications companies were asked to do business in the digital sector. Merza said this scenario seemed very wise.
However, he is worried that this could cause the frequency to be neglected. Because operators are focusing more on their digital business.
“I’m worried that on the other hand, if all operators end up doing digital business, the infrastructure will be abandoned. There will be no one to look after the infrastructure. So just network users, the network won’t be taken care of,” he said.
“You can’t, in fact both have to grow together. You have to look after them together, you have to be healthy together,” he added.
[Gambas:Video CNBC]
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