Indonesian ride-hailing company Go-Jek, one of the nation's unicorns, confirmed its plans to expand into other countries in the Southeast Asian region. Over the next couple of months the company will invest USD $500 million to start delivering its ride-hailing services in Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and the Philippines. Earlier, Go-Jek had already expressed its intention to expand beyond the borders of Indonesia. This time, however, it has given more details about its plans.

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It has been a while since we last reported on developments surrounding the Palapa Ring project, one of Indonesia's priority infrastructure projects in the 2016-2019 period. The Palapa Ring, which involves an undersea fiber-optic cable network that stretches across 13,000 kilometers as well as an onshore network of nearly 22,000 kilometers, will provide fast broadband Internet to Indonesians in both the urban and rural areas across the country. Once completed, all Indonesian districts (kabupaten) are connected through fiber-optic communication.

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The local and thriving ride-hailing market in Southeast Asia is dominated by local startups. Foreign counterparts fail to gain significant market share. The latest proof is Uber Technologies Inc.'s decision to sell its operations and assets in the Southeast Asian region to Singapore-based technology company (but originally founded in Malaysia) Grab. Through this consolidation-move, Uber will obtain a 27.5 percent stake in the combined entity, while Uber's chief executive officer will join the board of Grab.

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Based on Ookla's Speedtest Global Index, which ranks Internet speeds around the world, the global average mobile download speeds have grown 30.1 percent over the past year, while the mobile upload speed rose 38.9 percent over the same time. Meanwhile, the latest ranking (November 2017) also shows a 31.6 percent global speed growth for fixed broadband downloads along with a 25.9 percent increase for broadband upload speeds.

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Rudiantara, Indonesian Minister of Communication and Information, targets to see the availability of 4G networks across all Indonesian cities and districts by the year 2019. That year the government's Palapa Ring project is planned to be completed. This project, involving an undersea fiber-optic cable network that stretches across 13,000 km and an onshore network of nearly 22,000 km, will provide fast broadband Internet to Indonesians in the urban and rural areas.

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Based on a new survey, conducted by ShopBack Indonesia, two out of every five Indonesians buy a product online after having seen the product in an offline store. The survey mentions that 42.2 percent of women and 40.7 percent of men indicate that they have seen the goods directly in the physical store (offline) first and then decide to buy the goods online.

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Based on statements expressed by an official of Indonesia's Communication and Information Ministry, the government of Indonesia will not block WhatsApp Messenger, one of the most popular freeware and cross-platform instant messaging services for smartphones (owned by Facebook Inc). On Monday (06/11) the ministry said it would block WhatsApp within 48 hours if WhatsApp would fail to remove specific pornographic content.

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The number of mergers and acquisitions in Indonesia rose 5.4 percent year-on-year (y/y) to 136 deals up to August 2017, mostly involving technology companies. In terms of value, on the other hand, M&As in the first eight months of the year actually fell 9.9 percent (y/y) to USD $6.8 billion. However, not all M&A deals in Indonesia have revealed the value of the deal.

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Leading American online social media and social networking service Facebook will open a permanent business entity (a foreign limited liability company, in Indonesian: perseroan terbatas penanaman modal asing, or PT PMA) in Indonesia later this month. The move is in line with Indonesian government requests. Earlier, Facebook only operated a representative office in Jakarta.

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Indonesia's Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara says all Indonesians across the whole archipelago will be able to enjoy Internet access by 2019. Through the Palapa Ring project, one of Indonesia's priority infrastructure projects, all cities and districts in Indonesia will have fast broadband Internet through an undersea fiber-optic cable network that stretches across 13,000 kilometers as well as an onshore network of nearly 22,000 kilometers.

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The high level of consumption in Indonesia is remarkable. In fact, household consumption in Indonesia is an important engine of economic expansion in Southeast Asia’s largest economy as it accounts for about 55 percent of economic growth. One of the most popular consumption products are gadgets, in particular mobile gadgets. Just take a look in urban environments in Indonesia; everywhere people are holding, playing with, and communicating through some sort of mobile technological device.

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