Recently, Huawei has just published a paper entitled the Global Connectivity Index (GCI) 2015, an index that compares connectivity, utilization, ICT and digital transformation in 50 countries around the world. This time, Indonesia got ranked the 41st, below other Southeast Asian fellows like Malaysia, Vietnam, and Singapore.

In its press release, Huawei explained that this year’s index applied a methodology that doubled  the amount of both ICT variables and object countries, compared to the previous year’s. This year, GCI succeeded in presenting the correlation required for designating the government and other stakeholders’ target investment.

Kevin Zhang, President of Huawei Corporate Marketing, stated, “GCI isn’t all about ranks of countries. We perceive it as a platform for partnering with regulators and company leaders in identifying, making use of, and generating new digital economic opportunities with the aim to create a better connected world.”

According to GCI’s data, Indonesia lies below Malaysia, Thailand, and Singapore, which occupy the 28th, 31st, and third position respectively.

In the report, it is stated as well that there’s a strong correlation between the realization of ICT investment and the GDP, in the term that a massive ICT investment will favor the GDP of a country, and vice versa. Indonesia, the report suggests, only invested 1.2 percent for ICT. Singapore led the region with 3.8 percent, followed by Malaysia (2.8 percent) and Thailand (2.4 percent).

The report also takes the penetration of broadband and cellular network into account. In this point, Indonesia showed a lead with 18 percent of smartphone penetration and 24.2 percent of mobile broadband penetration. It was in line with the Ministry’s data that suggesting that the establishment of BTS 3G from 2010 to 2013 experienced a quite significant increase.

Regarding the fixed broadband, GCI 2015 showed that the fixed-broadband penetration in Indonesia remained low, so does its services which could only be enjoyed by the haves.

The government has indeed planned and promised that the broadband quality in Indonesia will be the best by 2019. Well, it’s supposed to be equally distributed and affodable as well. Failed to do so, it would only be a waste.