Govt to name firm to operate public phones

Govt to name firm to operate public phones

JAKARTA (JP): The government has decided to give permission to one company to manage public telephones outside the capital.

Minister of Tourism, Post and Telecommunication Joop Ave told reporters here yesterday that the company allowed to manage the public phones would not be a large one.

Presently, he said, more than three private companies manage public telephones. He did not mention the names of the firms.

Other businesses which are specifically open to small-scale firms and cooperatives are the wartel (telecommunications stalls) and Internet service providers.

Joop said that public telephones were especially needed to cater to the large number of paging services currently operating in the country because people receiving paged messages often need immediate access to a telephone.

He said that two years ago the only two companies given permission to operate nationwide paging services had listed 24,000 customers.

Joop added that the prospects of the paging business seemed good, so the government allowed eight other companies to operate paging services throughout the country.

"Nationwide services needed large investments, so this was opened to large companies," he said.

The smaller scope regional or local paging services have been reserved for small-scale companies. "Currently some 90 small- scale companies provide such services," Joop said.

In about a year, the number of customers using paging services reached 500,000. "Therefore, I have increased the target for the Sixth Five Year Development Plan period from one million customers (of paging services) to three million," Joop said.

But he considered that the number of public phones in the country as inadequate -- both in terms of quantity and quality -- to meet the increasing demand generated by paging services and other factors.

The government, Joop said, has stipulated that three percent of the five million telephone lines to be installed by the end of the development plan period in March 1999 must be allocated for public phones.

The government recently awarded five joint operation contracts for telecommunications facilities in Kalimantan, Central Java, Sumatra, West Java and the nation's eastern islands to private sector companies.

Of the five million telephone lines to be installed by the end of the development plan period, two million have been set aside for private companies under joint operation contracts, while the other three million, to be installed in the greater Jakarta area and East Java, will be managed by the state-owned domestic telecommunications operator, PT Telkom. (pwn)