PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Persero) Tbk’s Bandung personnel take part in training to change the direction of an antenna from Telkom 1 satellite to that of Telkom 3S satellite, at the West Java Regional III Division Telkom office on Tuesday (29/8). The activity aims to ensure that employees have the skills to speed up the recovery process of automatic teller machines (ATM) after hundreds of bank branches were forced to cease operations because of a shutdown of the Telkom 1 satellite last Friday. (25/8)
JAKARTA, KOMPAS – State-owned PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Tbk (PT Telkom) is still migrating and restoring banking services that were affected by technical disruptions of its Telkom 1 satellite. Once the service network is restored, customers will again be able to use automated teller machines (ATMs).
To ensure the speedy recovery of its satellite service, PT Telkom is deploying its entire operations staff nationwide. The goal is to assist in repositioning the parabolic antenna of the very small aperture terminal (VSAT) toward new satellites that will take over Telkom 1’s functions. There are around 15,000 VSAT antennas that need to be repositioned.
“Furthermore, a majority of VSAT parabolic antennas are located in areas without backup systems,” Telkom spokesperson Pujo Pramono said in Jakarta on Tuesday (29/8).
In Telkom’s West Java Regional Division III, antenna repair training was under way for 45 operations staff from several Telkom offices. “We will start deploying our staff on Thursday to fix the antenna of disrupted ATMs based on data from headquarters,” said West Java Regional Division III network operations manager Rizal Fakta Basri.
PT Bank Central Asia president director Jahja Setiaatmadja said that the migration of its ATM network was ongoing. He expected 1,500 ATMs to be restored within the coming week.
In order to resolve the service disruption of 5,700 ATMs since Friday (25/8), BCA was repositioning its antenna and arranging compensation for customers that withdrew money from other banks’ ATMs.
“BCA needs to pay Rp 6,500 to the ATM service banks and Rp1,000 to the switching company for each transaction. So, it’s a total of Rp 7,500 per transaction. This is usually charged to customers, but we will refund it for cash withdrawals made through September 10, 2017,” said Jahja.
Earlier, BCA director Santoso said that the Telkom 1 satellite disruption was a force majeure and the company would not request compensation from Telkom. The corporate secretaries of state lenders PT Bank Negara Indonesia (Persero) Tbk and PT Bank Mandiri (Persero) Tbk, respectively Kiryanto and Rohan Hafas, also said that the two banks would not ask Telkom for compensation.
Rohan said the 500 ATMs yet to be migrated to other networks were located in remote areas that were difficult to reach. The average weekly transaction at each of these ATMs is Rp 50 million (US$3,748.13).
“Next week, the network migration of these 500 ATMs will be completed. Once the Telkom 1 satellite is restored, we will return the antennas to their original positioning,” Rohan said.
Telkom spokesperson Arief Prabowo said that compensation for all problems related to the Telkom 1 satellite was included in the business contracts Telkom made with its clients. Each contract had different terms on service quality and compensation.
Separately, PT Bank Permata Tbk economist Josua Pardede said that banks were now expected to use several satellites to support their service network to mitigate the future risk of anomalies in satellite operations.
Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara urged Telkom to restore its services and migrate the affected services to other satellites it operated. Information on the service restoration should be communicated to the public to prevent future disruptions to the nation’s satellite network.
Rudiantara added that the government had secured the orbital slot of Telkom 1, which will be retired in 2018, in an effort to prevent any further delays to Telkom’s services.
