In many Indonesian housing complexes, one fibre subscription is split across a dozen houses using self-installed antennas and cabling. It costs far less for everyone involved, and the practice has been running for years.
The question that rarely gets a straight answer: is it lawful?
The answer turns on one thing, and it is not the number of customers or the size of the profit.
The line that separates
Law Number 36 of 1999 on Telecommunications provides that operating a telecommunications service requires a licence. Operating here covers providing telecommunications services to others while taking payment.
| Situation | Generally treated as |
|---|---|
| Wi-Fi shared within one household | Personal use |
| A neighbour using it, without payment | Not service provision |
| Splitting costs, no profit, a small circle | A grey area |
| Collecting monthly fees from customers | Service provision |
| Building a network and selling packages | Service provision |
Note that the number of customers does not appear as a distinguishing factor. Two paying customers sit in the same category as two hundred. What distinguishes them is taking payment for the service.
Important note. This is an educational summary, not legal advice. How the rules apply to a particular situation depends on many things that cannot be assessed from a distance. For business decisions, consult a competent legal adviser.
Often overlooked: your subscription terms
Before the law comes into it, there is a closer layer that causes consequences far more often: the agreement with your own internet provider.
Almost every home subscription includes a term stating the service is for personal use only and must not be resold. Breaching it will not take you to court, but it gives the provider grounds to terminate the subscription unilaterally.
This is the risk that most often materialises in practice. A network already built and customers who have already paid in advance become a problem the moment the upstream connection is cut.
Three risks rarely accounted for
Responsibility for customers' traffic
All your customers' activity leaves through one IP address: your subscription's. If there is misuse, the trail stops at your name, and you need to be able to explain who was using it.
Customers' personal data
Collecting customers' names, phone numbers, and addresses makes you a personal data controller under Law No. 27 of 2022, with the duties that follow. The details are in the guide to the PDP Law.
Dependence on a single point
One upstream subscription means one point of failure for every customer. A fault that would normally inconvenience one household becomes a dozen complaints at once.
Safer routes
If the operation has already grown, there are options that do not require dismantling what is already running:
- Become a licensed ISP's partner. Several providers open agency schemes that let you manage customers in your own area while the licence and the responsibility for operating rest with them. This is the most common route for an RT RW net wanting to regularise itself.
- Move to a business subscription. Business packages generally permit shared use and come with support that differs from home packages.
- Obtain your own licence. This only makes sense once the operation is large enough to absorb the licensing costs and the reporting obligations that come with it.
- Turn it into genuine cost sharing. No margin, no packages, with costs divided openly among a limited number of participants.
The technical side that still needs sorting
Regardless of legal status, a shared network has characteristic technical problems that get overlooked.
The most common: every customer sits on one flat network, so their devices can see each other. A computer in one house can reach files shared in another without anyone intending it. Separating customers from one another is a requirement, not a refinement, the principle is the same as in the guide to separating a guest network.
Next: capacity. One 100 Mbps subscription split across twelve houses does not give each house 100 Mbps, and at busy hours the difference is stark. How to estimate actual requirements is covered in the guide to venue Wi-Fi capacity, whose arithmetic applies equally to a neighbourhood network.
Finally, per-customer limits. Without a speed cap per connection, one person downloading heavily can make the whole neighbourhood feel their internet is broken. This symptom is often mistaken for a provider fault, discussed in the guide to fixing slow Wi-Fi.
Frequently asked questions
Is sharing Wi-Fi with a neighbour a violation?
Sharing without charging is generally not treated as a problem, although some providers prohibit it in their subscription terms. What becomes a legal issue is reselling access for payment to others without a provider licence.
How many customers make RT RW net count as a business?
There is no numerical threshold in the rules. What matters is not how many customers there are, but whether payment is taken for a telecommunications service. Two paying customers fall into the same category as two hundred.
Can it be made lawful without obtaining your own licence?
Yes, by becoming an official partner of a licensed provider. A number of ISPs offer agency schemes that let you manage customers in your own area while the licence and legal responsibility rest with them.
