Executive SummaryEast Timor The tiny new nation of East Timor has got off to a solid start in rebuilding its entire infrastructure following the turbulence that ensued after the referendum of 1999.
Initially, the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET) provided overall administrative and financial assistance during the transition period until elections were held in April 2002.
The United Nations finally completed its role in early 2005.
The new government is now looking to gain ongoing assistance from the international community in putting strong systems in place.
Telecommunications remains an important priority under the new Ministry of Transport, Communication & Public Works.
In July 2002, the fledgling government selected Portugal Telecom to be the leading partner in a consortium to operate Timor Telecom.
The new operator replaced Telstra in March 2003 and has set about expanding the countries telecom facilities.Indonesia, a country of more than 220 million people, has some big challenges to confront in building its telecommunications infrastructure.
Apart from its geographical complexity, it has had to deal with a range of social, political and economic issues.
Having rebounded reasonably well from the Asian economic crisis of the late 1990s, despite being arguably the worst affected economy in the region, the government has been gradually reshaping the telecom industry.
The country is now seeing healthy growth in both subscriber numbers and in revenues.
Changes in the regulatory regime and the opening up of the market to more private investors have finally started to have an impact.
A new telecom regulator - Badan Regulasi Telekomunikasi Indonesia (BRTI) - took up responsibility in early 2004.Indonesia’s national fixed-line teledensity has remained disconcertingly low (still languishing around 4%), but the country has been continuing to build a solid foundation of telecom infrastructure.
The move by incumbent Telkom to rapidly roll out Wireless Local Loop (WLL) services to provide for unserved communities is promising.
The country’s mobile market has continued to expand and by early 2005 the subscriber base had reached 25 million.
This was up from 3.6 million subscribers just four years earlier.
Whilst mobile penetration has quickly raced past 10%, there is enormous potential remaining for further growth in this market.
The government has already chosen a company, Cyber Access Communications, to provide the country with its first 3G network.
There is certain to be considerable interest in this project.Malaysia has been keen to position itself as a technological progressive economy.
To this end it has built one of the more advanced telecom networks in the developing world.
Whilst still in the process of expanding, the country’s telecom sector has undergone a period of consolidation with telecom companies doing battle in an increasingly competitive and changing market.
Despite the slowdown that followed the economic crisis of the late 1990s, the last decade has seen positive growth in the Malaysia’s telecom sector.The mobile sector grew from over 2 million subscribers in 1998 to 15 million, a penetration of 60%, by early 2005.
Although annual growth in mobiles has slowed to around 25%, the market remains very strong, with Malaysia having the second highest mobile penetration in South East Asia after Singapore.
And like the Philippines, Malaysia’s mobile users have enthusiastically embraced Short Message Service (SMS).
The country recorded more than 8 billion SMS messages sent in 2004.Malaysia has also been continuing to develop its multi-billion dollar Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) project, another part of the government’s strategy to turn Malaysia into the high technology hub of South East Asia.
So far more than US$5 billion has been invested in this project.
The government says that it is meeting targets, with over 1,200 companies already involved.Philippines - Despite a lot of effort and the best of intentions, the Philippines has been struggling to extend its basic telephone network to reach the wider population.
Only a little more than half the towns and cities in the country have a telephone service.
A fixed-line teledensity of 12% by 2002 was the target set for the government’s Service Area Scheme.
However, the plan fell well short of target, achieving a teledensity of just over 4% by then.
Fixed-line penetration has not increased much since.
More recently, however, there has been the rapid take-up of mobile services and, following on from that, the remarkably high national usage of the Short Message Service (SMS).
The country has quickly built up its mobile penetration and this had reached 40% (35 million subscribers) by early 2005.
There were only 2.7 million mobile subscribers in the country at end-1999.
Mobiles have now well and truly overwhelmed fixed-line services.
Much of the growth has started to come from outside the main city of Manila, with the big operators, Globe and Smart, vying for lower income segments of the population by offering a range of cheap prepaid products.
There is considerable optimism in the market as the telecommunications sector has been contributing over 10% to the country’s GDP, boosted considerably by the booming mobile segment.