AriaWest fires back at Telkom over line services
JAKARTA (JP): American telecom giant AT&T's Indonesian subsidiary, PT AriaWest International, said on Saturday it regretted accusations against the company by its local partner, the publicly listed PT Telkom, and called them "blatantly untrue".
Company chief financial officer Stephen Dowling said AriaWest, Telkom's partner in the Joint Cooperation Scheme (KSO) projects, never willingly stopped developing telephone lines in its working area of West Java.
He said it was Telkom that had put further line development in the KSO regions on hold for over 18 months by deliberately not entering into additional new investment negotiations with the partners as stipulated in the KSO agreement.
"After completing the development of lines as required by the 1998 MoU, AriaWest has made countless unfruitful attempts to sit down at the negotiating table with Telkom to find a solution to enable AriaWest to continue development in West Java," he said in a statement.
Telkom lambasted AriaWest last week for suspending the sales and installation of new telephone lines for both individual and commercial customers in West Java without Telkom's consent.
The company's spokesman Dodi Amirudin said AriaWest's unwise decision had left about 50,000 would-be customers abandoned and disgraced Telkom's public image.
He also accused AriaWest of falling short of accomplishing contractual tasks to build 290,000 telephone lines in the area.
AriaWest president John G. Vondras strongly rejected the charge and shot back at Dodi, accusing him of blaming AriaWest for Telkom's own shortcomings.
Vondras said AriaWest had exceeded its committed target of 290,000 phone lines in West Java and had increased telephone inline units from 325,000 when it took over the area in January 1996 to 695,000 in late 1999.
He said an audit report showed that Telkom had failed to complete its obligation to put 39,623 of the required 107,536 lines in service.
"By not meeting the obligation, Telkom has blocked 69,913 possible customers's access to a phone line in West Java," he said.
Telkom and AriaWest have been arguing since November last year, trying to solve a disagreement over the management and operation of the lucrative telephone business.
AriaWest, and four other foreign joint ventures, namely PT Pramindo Ikat Nusantara, PT Mitra Global Telekomindo Indonesia, PT Cable & Wireless Mitratel and PT Bukaka Singtel, entered into business contracts with Telkom in 1996.
World telecom giants like France Cable et Radio, American AT&T, Britain's Cable & Wireless Plc., Australian Telstra, Japan's Marubeni Corp., Sumitomo Corp., and Itochu Corp, Singapore Telecom and Hong Kong's TM Communications are involved as shareholders in the five companies.
Telkom appointed and authorized the five companies to finance, build and operate domestic fixed line telephone services separately across the country on behalf of Telkom under a revenue-sharing scheme until 2010.
However, Telkom said it was not happy with the way the partners managed the business and their alleged failure to meet the targeted telephone line development.
The partners, on the other hand, said they were irritated by Telkom's disturbing and overbearing intervention both in the management and daily operations in their respective working areas.
Telkom officials recently said the company was willing to compromise with its partners in order to maintain the business cooperation and save the government's face before international investors.
But, Telkom asked that the foreign partners, who have demanded changes in the current business deal into a joint venture, to show goodwill and a better understanding of the company's position in return. (cst)