Indonesia’s digital constitutive moment: How the rewrite of the Broadcast Law will shape Indonesia’s digital future

This article explores the current development of digital terrestrial television (DTT) implementation and its impact on the broadcast television and telecommunication industry as a whole in Indonesia. Delay after delay, which culminated in the suspension of all DTT policies by the newly elected Jokowi administration, have created a lot of uncertainty for many stakeholders. This article focuses on several recent DTT regulatory events – namely the creation and collapse of DTT ministerial regulations, the distribution of the latest broadcast bill and the cabinet’s digital economy policies. These events demonstrate the limitations of broadcast policy to reconfigure the current broadcast television industry in order to create a more diverse broadcast and telecommunication ecosystem. Drawing on primary documents – official reports; policy announcements; recordings of government meetings; interviews with stakeholders and statistics and statements from key political and industrial figures – this article posits that, by opening up the entire broadcast law to a rewrite for the sake of accommodating DTT implementation, Indonesia risks deregulating the entire market and maintaining the predatory practices of broadcast industry incumbents