Indonesia has fairly effective telecommunications and infrastructure, especially roads. From 1969 to 1988, the first 3 Repelitas allocated 55 percent of expenditures on transportation infrastructure to road building and maintenance, with the rest for marine transportation, railroads, and air and river transportation. This trend has continued in the 1990s. As a result, Indonesia had 342,700 kilometers (212,954) miles of roads in 1997, although fewer than half of that number were paved. Railway lines totaled 6,458 kilometers (4,013 miles) in 1995. In 1998 there were more than 16 million vehicles on the road, but only 2.6 million were cars, with most of the rest (11.7 million) being motorcycles.
There are 446 airports throughout Indonesia, but only 127 of them have paved runways. As an archipelago, Indonesia relies on a huge fleet of ships for transporting both passengers and goods. Important ports include Cirebon, Jakarta, Kupang, Palembang, Semarang, Surabaya, and Ujungpandang. Once highly restricted and bureaucratic, inter-island shipping was deregulated as part of the economic reform packages of the 1980s. Traditional shipping still plays an important role, with an estimated 10,000 two-masted sailing ships shuttling around the islands, though many have been motorized.
| Communications | |||||||||
| Country | Newspapers | Radios | TV Sets a | Cable subscribers a | Mobile Phones a | Fax Machines a | Personal Computers a | Internet Hosts b | Internet Users b |
| 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1998 | 1998 | 1998 | 1998 | 1999 | 1999 | |
| Indonesia | 24 | 156 | 136 | N/A | 5 | 0.9 | 8.2 | 0.76 | 900 |
| United States | 215 | 2,146 | 847 | 244.3 | 256 | 78.4 | 458.6 | 1,508.77 | 74,100 |
| China | N/A | 333 | 272 | 40.0 | 19 | 1.6 | 8.9 | 0.50 | 8,900 |
| Malaysia | 158 | 420 | 166 | 5.2 | 99 | 6.9 | 58.6 | 23.53 | 1,500 |
| a Data are from International Telecommunication Union, World Telecommunication Development Report 1999 and are per 1,000 people. | |||||||||
| b Data are from the Internet Software Consortium ( http://www.isc.org ) and are per 10,000 people. | |||||||||
| SOURCE: World Bank. World Development Indicators 2000. | |||||||||
Electricity production in 1998 was estimated at 73.13 billion kilowatt hours (kWh), mostly from fossil fuels (88 percent), with most of the rest from hydroelectric plants (8 percent). An August 1998 restructuring policy for the power sector included plans to restore profitability, improve efficiency, and attract private investment.
There were 4.8 million telephone lines in use in 1997, and an estimated 1.2 million cell phones, as well as 31.5 million radios and 13.75 million television sets. By 1999, Indonesia had 24 Internet service providers for an estimated 1 million users, a figure expected to grow by 50 percent by 2000, despite a shortage of phone lines and limited access to computers.
There are 2 state-owned telephone companies. Indosat provides international telecommunications while Telkom provides service domestically. Both are economically healthy, and Indosat is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Indonesia is under pressure to privatize its telecommunications sector.