Communications in East Timor

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Following Indonesian withdrawal from East Timor in 1999, the telecommunications infrastructure was destroyed in the ensuing violence, and Telkom Indonesia ceased to provide services. A new country calling code (670) was allocated to East Timor, but international access often remains severely limited. A complicating factor is the fact that 670 was previously used by the Northern Marianas, with many carriers not aware that the code is now used by East Timor. (The Northern Marianas, now part of the North American Numbering Plan, use the code 1 and the area code 670.)

It is also often extremely expensive: for example, Telstra in Australia raised the cost of calls to East Timor to A$3.00 a minute from 97 cents in 2003. In the UK, BT's standard rate is £2 a minute.

Telstra expanded its cellular telephone signal into East Timor in 2000, and operated services until 2003, when Timor Telecom, 50.1% part-owned by Portugal Telecom, began operating fixed line and mobile telephone services. Until recently, the fixed line network was mainly confined to the capital Dili, although this has been expanded nationwide, to each district capital.

According to a press-release issued by Portugal Telecom, the total number of fixed phones (landline) are 2,100, mobile cellular are 25,000, 500 Dial-up access users and 30 dedicated line users (as of October 2004). There is no broadband or ADSL service.

Portugal Telecom signed a 15-year contract in 2002 to invest US$ 29 million to rebuild and operate the phone system. The contract could be extended by 10 more years, totalling 25 years of monopoly. 2003 gross revenue totalled € 10.5 million.

All voice and data are carried out by Intelsat, using a direct satellite link with one hop to their downlink in Portugal.

Telephones - main lines in use:
2,100 (per Timor Telecom press-release from Oct 2004)

Telephones - mobile cellular:
25,000 (per Timor Telecom press-release from Oct 2004)

Telephone system:
NA

Radio broadcast stations:
AM NA, FM NA, shortwave NA
The main station is Radio Timor Leste, broadcasting in Tetum, Portuguese and Indonesian. Other radio stations include Radio Kmanek, and Radio Falintil, and Radio Renascença, while there are also FM retransmissions of RDP Internacional from Portugal, Radio Australia, and the BBC World Service. Community radio stations broadcast around the country, in regional languages such as Tokodede and Fataluku.

Radios:
5

Television broadcast stations:
1 Televisão Timor Leste or Televizaun Timor Lorosae - broadcasts local programming in Tetum and Portuguese, as well as retransmissions of RTP Internacional from Portugal, ABC Asia Pacific from Australia and BBC World from the UK. The TV signal is presently confined to Dili, with only taped broadcasts being available in Baucau, but the Portuguese government and RTP are to help build new transmitters to expand TVTL's coverage nationwide during 2006.

Televisions:
NA

Internet country code:
.tp is the internet top-level domain code used for East Timor, based on its previous ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code. However, the latter code was officially changed to TL when the country achieved its independence on May 20, 2002, and during the course of 2005-06, internet domains will change from '.tp' to '.tl'.

Internet Service Providers (ISPs):
2
Timor Telecom is an ISP itself along with one downstream provider, iNet. The latter only offers services in the capital, Dili. Two-way Satellite Internet is in theory available, as the country falls within the Australian and Asian footprints of several satellites offering this service, however in practice licences are not granted for use of non-Timor Telecom services. As such, internet services are restricted to locations with landline telephone or dedicated line infrastructure. WiMAX and GPRS internet access are not available.

Voice over IP
Timor Telecom has sought to block some Voice over IP services on its network such as Skype, and as a result some such services may not function.

Internet users:
Dial-up: 2,100 (per Timor Telecom press-release from Oct 2004)
Broadband: 50 (per Timor Telecom press-release from Oct 2004)