Indosat teams up with ZTE

Indosat teams up with ZTE

JAKARTA: Indonesia's second-largest telecommunications firm, PT Indonesian Satellite Corp., said on Friday it has asked Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment Co. (ZTE) to set up a trial network of fixed wireless lines in Jakarta and Surabaya, East Java.

Indosat said in a statement the trial is expected to be completed by in August. China-based ZTE is a unit of ZTE Corp., which is listed on the Shenzhen stock market.

"We expect that the trial will be successful and later we will evaluate it to determine a plan to operate it commercially," Indosat's President Director Widya Purnama said in a statement.

He said Indosat has asked ZTE to construct and finance the network. He didn't offer details.

Indosat's choice of ZTE came after it terminated an earlier partnership with Mega Asia Consortium, or MAC, June 17 because the two sides failed to reach an agreement, notably over the equity placement arrangements.

Under the deal, signed in March 18, Indosat said Mega Asia was to build around 450,000 fixed wireless lines in Jakarta and around 250,000 lines in Surabaya.

The project was to use code division multiple access, or CDMA, and the capital expenditure for the project was estimated at around US$164 per line, Indosat said. --Dow Jones