Komselindo sets aside $40m for expansion

JAKARTA (JP): PT Komunikasi Selular Indonesia (Komselindo), a new private cellular telecommunications operator, has allocated an investment of Rp 90 billion (US$40.14 million) for the expansion of its cellular telecommunications business.

The company's president, Soedjono Kramadibrata, said yesterday that the investment will be used to install more digital switching networks and 67 radio base stations.

Komselindo's director of commerce, Zen Smith, said that the new radio base stations, which will bring the total number of such facilities to 113, will use the narrow band advanced mobile phone service (AMPS) system to provide clearer voice and greater capacity.

Komselindo, set up with an investment of Rp 300 billion ($133.8 million) in January, is 65 percent controlled by PT Elektrindo Nusantara, an affiliate of the Bimantara Group, and 35 percent by the state-owned domestic telecommunications operator PT Telkom.

Komselindo's business was previously run jointly by Telkom and Elektrindo under a revenue sharing arrangement.

According to Soedjono, AMPS is one of the leading systems used for cellular telecommunications in the world.

"As of April this year, AMPS had been applied to 51.22 million cellular mobile telephones or 60.6 percent of such telephones in the world," he said after signing agreements with 13 appointed sole agents here yesterday.

Besides AMPS, the analog and digital cellular mobile telephones in the world also use the American Digital Cellular (ADC) the Personal Digital Cellular (PDC), Global System for Mobile communications (GSM) and Nordic Mobile Telephones (NMT) systems.

In Indonesia, three systems are operated by different operators -- AMPS by Komselindo and PT Centralindo Pancasakti, NMT by PT Rajasa Hasanah Perkasa and GSM by PT Satelindo, PT Telkomsel and PT Telekomindo.

Soedjono said that his company currently controls some 70 percent of the cellular mobile telephone market in Indonesia.

He said Komselindo, whose handsets can be used for international calls from 16 cities in 12 provinces, currently lists some 50,000 subscribers.

"The number of subscribers is expected to reach 90,000 next year and to further increase to 400,000 by the end of 2000," he said, adding that marketing cooperation with agents will support business growth.

The 13 sole agents which signed yesterday's agreement are distributors of branded handsets with the trademarks of Motorola, NEC, Nokia, Ericsson, Philips, Mitsubishi, JRC, Panasonic, Audiovox, Hitachi, Oki, Cellstar and Goldstar.

Soedjono said that Komselindo has also installed the automatic anti-fraud system, a digital system to avoid the cloning of any of Komselindo's cellular telephones.

"The rate of cloning problems has decreased steadily from 10 percent in March to just three percent in June this year. We expect to push the rate down to one percent by the end of this year," he said. (icn)