Telkom is one of the oldest telecommunication companies in the world, with its history dating back to the colonial period. The company's history started on 23 October 1856, when
the colonial government established an electromagnetic
telegraph service connecting Batavia (
Jakarta) and Buitenzorg (
Bogor). The telegraph service continued to grow, and in 1884, the colonial government established a private company in Bandung to provide postal and domestic telegraph services, which were later upgraded to international telegraph and telephone services.
Early years Telephony services to the colony were introduced in 1882, initially under the management of private companies with government licenses. Then, to centralize things, the Dutch government consolidated all postal and telegraph services in 1906 into a single state agency: the Post, Telegraph and Telephone Service (, PTT). The turmoil of World War II profoundly affected the development of this government institution. Following the
Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, the government-in-exile decided to assert direct state control over all Dutch property, including PTT assets in the colonies, to prevent them from falling into German hands. This was, however, temporary, as
Japan occupied the Dutch East Indies between 1942 and 1945 and took over all communication networks.
State-owned company In 1961, the PTT was transformed from a government agency into a
statutory corporation, the Postal and Telecommunications Services company. Four years later, on 6 July 1965, the Indonesian government split the company in two:
PN Pos Giro would handle
mail services, and
PN Telekomunikasi would be responsible for
telecommunications. The postal branch would eventually evolve into
Pos Indonesia in 1995, which remains the state-owned postal service for the nation's 230 million people. The Indonesian government retains an aggregate interest of 51.19% of the issued and outstanding shares of Telkom. It also holds one
Dwiwarna, or
golden share, granting it certain veto powers. In mid-1997, Indonesia was badly affected by the
Asian economic crisis. Among those impacted were certain KSO partners, who experienced difficulties in fulfilling their obligations to Telkom. Telkom eventually acquired control of its KSO partners in Regions I, III, and VI, and amended the terms of the KSO agreements with its KSO partners in Regions IV and VII to obtain legal rights to control the financial and operating decisions of those regions.
Telecommunication deregulation In 1999, Indonesia passed a
deregulating telecommunication law that set in motion a sweeping array of reforms and enlivened
competition policy,
private investment, and long term industry direction. On 7 June 2004, Telkom began to provide their own
international direct dial fixed line services. On 16 November 2005, the
Telkom-2 satellite was launched to replace all
satellite transmission services that have been served by previous satellite,
Palapa B-4.
Transformations In 2009, Telkom started transforming its business, being the only company in the field of telecommunications to transform to a broader range of business. The company expanded to telecommunications, information technology services, media and
edutainment. Telkom's decision to transform its business was prompted by the shift in customer lifestyles and supported by advances in technology and regulatory changes that enabled service providers to deliver enhanced service to customers. With this new business transformation, Telkom also plans to conduct the acquisition of several companies that are in line with Telkom's transformation of the new business. In August 2012, the
Telkom-3 satellite was lost in a launch failure, being placed into an unusably low orbit following the failure of the
Briz-M upper stage of the
Proton-M rocket that had launched it. Its replacement
Telkom-3S successfully launched aboard an
Ariane 5 rocket on 14 February 2017, 21:39 UTC. In March 2019, Telkom Indonesia was one of the first Asian telco's to launch a
cloud gaming service in cooperation with Gamestream. ==Operations==