Ganjar Will Prepare Free Internet For Students, This Is The Necessary Budget Estimation

Internet speed illustration (photo: Dinda Buana/VOI)

Presidential candidate number 3 Ganjar Pranowo in the 2024 presidential election debate on Sunday, February 4, said that he would provide assistance in the form of free internet for school purposes.

Based on a Cable study, the internet price comparison site, Indonesia occupies the 17th position as the cheapest internet country in the world, with an average internet price per GB (Gigabyte) of 0.28 US dollars (Rp4,394).

Cable said that the study was calculated based on more than 5,600 mobile data packets worldwide measured around June-September 2023.

Based on the results of a recent survey from the Indonesian Internet Service Providers Association (APJII), the number of internet penetration in Indonesia reached 79.5% or around 221,563,279, out of the total population of Indonesia in 2023 as many as 278,696,200 people.

According to GoodStats data, based on data from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Research, and Technology (Kemendikbud Ristek), the number of students in Indonesia in the 2023/2024 school year reached 53.14 million people.

Where 50% of these figures are elementary school students, which is 24.04 million people. The number of junior high school students in Indonesia is 9.97 million, high school students are 5.32 million, and vocational school students are 5.08 million students.

Furthermore, there were 3.73 million kindergarten students, 2.44 million KB (Playing Group), 1.6 million PKBM (Community Learning Activity Center), and 614,033 SPS (Similar PAUD Units).

If candidate pairs (candidate pairs) President and Vice President number 3 plan to provide free internet assistance to students, then the required budget amount is at least IDR 42.61 trillion.

The calculation is that if each student is given a free internet subsidy of 500 MB (0.5 GB) at a price of Rp2,197 per day, then one student will need a cost of Rp801,905 per year (counting 365 days).

The number of students in Indonesia currently stands at around 53.14 million people, so if each student spends IDR 801,905 per year, the government must allocate funds of IDR 801,905 x 53.14 million students = IDR 42.613 trillion.