Talk:Indonesia/@comment-32750096-20190702060712/@comment-24682153-20190702144614

Hi Timmy.

You are right. There is a planned legislation in Indonesia to block "illegal" phones from working on a local network. This has been postponed to August 2019. We still have to wait and see how it's implemented. They seem to apply a whitelist approach like in Turkey which makes it hard for foreigners to have their imported phone declared as "legal". The main target is to curb the tax-free import of phones and force local users to use a phone bought and taxed in Indonesia. I have my doubts, if this system is going to work.

We'll need to see if they make exceptions for foreigners whose phones are normally not in the Indonesian database or whether they have an official or unoffical grace period before the phone will be blocked. So that temporary visitors are excempt from the scheme. Looking at places like Bali, I really can't imagine that they want to kill the local SIM card trade to foreigners which means a lot of money and employment for locals. But, hey, if they really do this, there are alternatives to Indonesian SIM cards coming from other countries of the region. We need to keep an eye on this.