Telecommunications infrastructure and regional economic growth in Indonesia

TI is usually associated with the improvement of economic development of a country. This paper aims to examine the association between TI and economic growth in Indonesia. In order to reach the objective, this paper use panel data from 33 provinces in Indonesia for eleven-year period from 2007 to 2017. The variables for TI are fixed telephone subscriber, cellular telephone subscriber, and internet subscriber. The results provide positive and strong association between TI and economic growth in provincial level in Indonesia. The results except for the fixed telephone are positive and significant association which imply that TI give strong and positive impact toward economic growth in Indonesia. Regarding the negative impact from fixed telephone, we can propose an explanation which is the decreasing condition of fixed telephone subscriber in Indonesia while cellular telephone subscriber and internet subscriber increased dramatically in the last decade.