Migration from Analogue to Digital: A Case of Indonesia

Indonesia is a country with 17.508 islands and inhabited by 255.5 million people with diverse cultural backgrounds. According to the data from the Centre of Indonesian Statistic Bureau and AGB Nielsen Media research, the numbers of television sets in Indonesia between 2005 and 2006 were about 35-40 millions and it was estimated around 140 million audiences watch television everyday. The technology used by the Indonesian TV still analogue. So far, the application of analogue broadcasting system in Indonesia has been a complicated discourse. On one hand, the content of the national broadcast has been primarily outstanding, even to particular extent, they are better than other countries in Asia; on the other hand, the contents themselves continue facing ethical problems. This paper discusses the problem of broadcasting system in Indonesia.

Jakata’s operators dominate the operation of television stations. Up to now, we have 10 national private TV stations (ANTV, Global TV, Indosiar, TV One, Metro TV, RCTI, SCTV, TPI, Trans TV and Trans 7) and one public broadcasting owned by the government (locally known as TVRI, Television of the Republic of Indonesia)., All these TVstations are free to air television. Apart from these national broadcasting stations, there have been approximately 70 local stations.

Since the operation of national private TV is dominated by those Jakarta’s operators, so the content of national TV has been influenced by the interest of those operators. Moreover, this condition has caused problematic for local TV stations. This can be seen from the use of the Ultra High Frequency (UHF) channels in most major cities, which have been occupied by those national stations. As a result, this reveals competitions between existing TV stations and the new local TV stations. Another problem is that so many applications logged in by the TV stations from major cities to get license. In fact, there are no more channels available for them.

The regulatory bodies, which controlling the broadcasting system in Indonesia, are the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology and Indonesian Broadcasting Commission (locally known as KPI). The Ministry of Communication is the authorize body for issuing the national policies as well as implementing the policies and technical know how in communication and information technology, including post, telecommunications, broadcasting, multi-media and information disseminations. It vision and mission are to build information society in Indonesia by improving information facilities and capacities, post and telecommunication, communication and information technologies infrastructure, providing the society a wider acess to information, and encouraging good governance. In order to achieve the mission and give information access for the public to communicate with the government, the office of Ministry of Communication and Information Technology has set up a website (www.depkominfo.go.id).

Meanwhile, the Indonesian Broadcasting Commision tend to focus its role in regulating and standardizing the content of the broadcast of media. This institusion has main role to monitor the media content and producing and implementing the code of broadcasting conduct. Together with the Ministry of Communication, KPI serve the process of broadcasting license. The Members of KPI, whom selected by the parliament, consist of civil society and professional broadcasters.

Similar condition appears for radio stations, especially for FM Radio. The fact is that the allocation of frequency for FM Radios has been used, but the great deal numbers of licensing applicants have been waiting for years. For that reason, the country needs a solution from the dilemmatic condition. Migration from analogue to digital is viewed as one of the appropriate solutions. Indeed, the use of digital technology will attract many operators in broadcasting business, but it should calculate the economic capacity of the regions in the country for developing fair competitiveness among them. However, even digital technology provides possibilities access for more operators than in digital; it does not mean that broadcast license can be released easily. Considering the economic capacity of the regions, the market niche in broadcasting environment remains important. As such, the consideration in releasing the license should account the diversity of content, public interest, public necessity and public convenience.

As the consequence of the great number of population and their multicultural characteristics, Indonesian people need to have various broadcasting programs. Hence, the migration from analog to digital broadcasting program is an avoidable process. Actually, the opening step to the digitalized system has been initiated since 1997 with the format of satellite television. Up to present, there are about 200.000 satellite and cable television subscribers in Indonesia.

Preparation to the Migration

Since 2004 under the coordination of Television and Radio Migration National Team, we have done number of research to implement the digital broadcasting system in the country. The trial program has been initiated in 2006 by using 34 UHF channel for DVB-T (Digital Video Broadcasting Terrestrial) standard and 27 UHF for DMB-T (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting Terrestrial) standard.

The evidence of this trial shows that DVB-T technology able to carry more programming channels. For instance, six programming channels can be accommodated at the same time in one UHF channel at 8 Mhz with high quality. The adjoin of DVB-H (Digital Video Broadcasting Handheld) can also add other six more programming channels, especially for the availability of mobile TV reception and for new programming channels.

After long research, public dialogues, and some experiments, the Indonesian government decides to use broadcasting digital system similar to European standard. The government issued regulation in 2007 on Terrestrial Digital Broadcasting Standard above mentioned, and DVB-T is used as a standard digital broadcasting television for fixed equipment in Indonesia. The regulation will direct the development of digital television broadcasting in the future. Nevertheless, there are still some considerations need to be concerned by the government for the further arrangement in the migration process such as; equipment standardization and the implementation of the time schedule. The regulation also becomes the starting point for the broadcasting societies to take further steps and ready to enter a new era of television broadcasting.

This new era of television broadcasting system opens the opportunity as well as challenging the development of advanced technology, economy and social psychology. From the economic point of view, this digital broadcasting system has developed economic potentials for broadcasting businesses such as production house, audio applications processing, video and multimedia, cinemas and entertainment industry. In addition, this will also give the rise of business set-top box, which will be used for the reception of the digital broadcast. This industry will be grown rapidly since every TV set needs to use the device. It can be imagined if 50% of television audiences need a set-top box for their TV set, there will be 20 million set-top boxes needed. This shows how Indonesian country is a huge potential market for the broadcasting industry.

To sum up, the migration to the digital broadcasting television system is an urgent action for Indonesia, since it has become the demand of the advanced technology era in the world of digitalized broadcasting. As such, the most important factor need to be accounted by the Indonesian government is improving knowledge and awareness of the people toward the migration from analogue to digital. Subsequently, the government has to continue promoting the importance of the digital broadcasting system.