SUKARMAN is at wits' end. For six years, this resident of Bojong Menteng in Bekasi has waited in vain for telephone poles to be erected in his neighborhood and for the sound of a telephone to ring inside his home. "How long must I wait for a telephone connection?" he wrote in a letter to the Kompas daily last July.

In another of Jakarta's outlying suburbs, Linawaty has met with the same situation. A resident of Gading Serpong, Tangerang, Lina