How it started
History
Telkom is one of the oldest telecommunication companies in the world, with its history dating back to the colonial period. The company's history started on 23 October 1856, when the colonial government established an electromagnetic telegraph service connecting Batavia (Jakarta) and Buitenzorg (Bogor).
The telegraph service continued to grow, and in 1884, the colonial government established a private company in Bandung to provide postal and domestic telegraph services, which were later upgraded to international telegraph and telephone services.
Early years
Telephony services to the colony were introduced in 1882, initially under the management of private companies with government licenses. Then, to centralize things, the Dutch government consolidated all postal and telegraph services in 1906 into a single state agency: the Post, Telegraph and Telephone Service (Dutch: Post-, Telegraaf-, en Telefoondienst, PTT).
The turmoil of World War II profoundly affected the development of this government institution. Following the Nazi occupation of the Netherlands in May 1940, the government-in-exile decided to assert direct state control over all Dutch property, including PTT assets in the colonies, to prevent them from falling into German hands. This was, however, temporary, as Japan occupied the Dutch East Indies between 1942 and 1945 and took over all communication networks.
From Wikipedia’s article on Telkom Indonesia, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3