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A man uses a cellphone as he sits in front of the Batavia Air office at Soekarno-Hatta International Airport outside Jakarta. (Reuters Photo/Beawiharta) It was all black with a sleek curve to match the shape of your face as you talked, and a smooth black cover which slid down to reveal a keypad to make a call. It felt so futuristic that it was used in the first Matrix film, tech writer Aulia Masna gleefully pointed out as he rehashed the memory of his first cellphone back in 1996, the Nokia 8110. "The screen of the 8110 was tiny by today's standards, but enough to show a single SMS without having to scroll too much," Aulia said. Telecommunication companies weathered a wobbly start due to rupiah inflation in the late '90s, but few could have imagined the immense growth of the industry in Indonesia. The sector is about to hit its 20th birthday with three companies, Telkomsel, XL Axiata and Indosat, maintaining a stranglehold on one of the world's biggest mobile phone and data markets. Today, in the world's fourth most populous nation, there are more active mobile subscriptions than people. Connecting an archipelago Ten years ago only two out of every 45 Indonesians had access to a fixed telephone, according to Redwing Asia. Although cellphones and mobile networks were available since the late '80s, through the now defunct AMPS network, many Indonesians living in rural areas had few methods of quick communication available to them. Traditional letters and motorcycle couriers were still the primary form of communication in the villages of Indonesia. One of the biggest hurdles phone companies had to overcome to connect the nation was Indonesia's unique geography. For more information: http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/758061 http://www.ran