Yuli Krisna, Bandung – The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology launched close to 2,000 Mobile Internet Service Centers on Monday to cater to rural areas in six provinces.

Each mobile unit, or MPLIK, is a small bus equipped with six laptops with a satellite Internet connection. Each unit also features a 124-centimeter flat-screen television and a telephone line. Each unit cost around Rp 500 million ($59,000).

"The MPLIK is designed to overcome the digital divide between urban and rural areas," the communication and information technology minister, Tifatul Sembiring, said in Bandung – "The ministry is developing a program where the Internet will be found in every subdistrict in Indonesia.

"For 2011 there will be 1,907 of these units. There will be more next year, but the exact number depends on the available budget for the program."

Tifatul said the central government had set up 5,748 Internet centers at the subdistrict level, but many subdistricts in the country were too remote to be reached by conventional means.

"So we have provided the MPLIK, which can travel from ward to ward so schoolchildren can take turns to access the Internet and use the computers," he said.

The first stage of the project, Tifatul said, will include areas of East Java, North Maluku, North Sulawesi, North Sumatra, West Java and West Sumatra.

He said the central government would provide free Internet connections for the first two years of the program, and after that the facilities would be operated by local administrations. "We urge our providers not to charge their normal commercial rate, because after all, this is for the people," he said.

Tifatul, a conservative politician from the Islam-based Prosperous Justice Party (PKS), said the MPLIK's Internet connection was designed to automatically block Web sites with pornographic content.

Sukry Batubara, director general of information technology, said the ministry was also working on the establishment of an integrated fiber-optic network to bridge the digital divide between more developed western Indonesia and impoverished areas in the east of the country.

The 10,000-kilometer fiber-optic network would also serve as an alternative information route, he said, which would be vital if the network in western Indonesian was disrupted.

Sukry also said the ministry had connected 32,800 remote villages to the Internet since 2008. The ministry expects all 72,000 villages in the country will be connected to the Internet by the end of this year, he added.