Mobisel offers new product to improve its services

Mobisel offers new product to improve its services

JAKARTA (JP): PT Mobile Selular Indonesia (Mobisel), a private
cellular telecommunications provider, introduced here yesterday
its new Nordic mobile telephone (NMT-450i) system which will
operate nationwide.

The NMT-450i service is a field-proven cellular technology
which was developed in Europe.

Mobisel president Suprapto Pegeng said that 21,000 users,
primarily in Jakarta, Tangerang and Bandung, had registered for
the service. The company expects to have at least 76,000 users by
the end of this year.
"We have allocated US$150 million for the investment this year,"
Carlson Smith, executive advisor/chief financial officer of
Mobisel, said

Mobisel, incorporated in February 1996, is 70 percent owned by
PT Rajasa Hazanah Perkasa, 25 percent by state-owned PT Telkom
and 5 percent by Telkom's employee pension fund. Rajasa, a firm
owned by businessman Hutomo (Tommy) Mandala Putra, previously
operated the NMT-450, the first generation of the NMT-450i
system.

Mobisel, which has signed a $30 million contract with Nokia of
Finland for the NMT-450i, won a $60 million credit facility last
March with Nissho Iwai International of Japan,

To support its customer service, Mobisel signed a $4 million
deal last August with Logica of Britain for a modern billing
system.

Pegeng said that his company would extend the NMT-450i service
to Sumatra, Bali and Lombok after establishing a network from
Lampung in southern Sumatra to Lombok in West Nusa Tenggara.

He said that Mobisel was the only NMT-450i license holder in
Indonesia to operate nationally.

Industry experts consider that NMT-450i technology is well
suited to Indonesia because its signal banding offers wider
geographic coverage at a substantially lower cost than other
cellular technology.

Indonesia has licensed three nationwide mobile cellular
telecommunications operators to use the global system for mobile
communications (GSM) technology. They are PT Satelindo, PT
Telkomsel and PT Excelcomindo. It has also licensed three
cellular operators, including PT Metro Selular Nusantara, PT
Telekomindo and PT Komselindo, to cover several provinces with
the advanced mobile phone system (AMPS), which can be upgraded to
a code division multiple access (CDMA) system.

By the end of 1996, there were some 600,000 cellular users in
Indonesia: 60 percent were GSM subscribers and 33 percent were
AMPS users.

The government wants eight million telephone lines to be
installed in the ongoing Sixth Five-Year Development Plan period
to end in March 1999. This target includes 6.7 million fixed-
telephone lines and a network capacity for 1.3 million mobile
telephones.

Satelindo

Separately, Satelindo, the operator of GSM, Palapa-C
satellites and international telecommunications, finalized
documentation here yesterday for US$152.42 million worth of loans
which it has received from a syndicate of 17 international banks
arranged by Credit Lyonnais and Deutsche Morgan Grenfell.

The loans, including a $127.42 million term loan guaranteed by
the Export-Import Bank of the United States, were extended for
the construction and launch of the Palapa-C1 and Palapa-C2
satellites.

Satelindo president Iwa Sewaka said the facility had extended
long term finance for the construction of Satelindo's Lockheed
Martin Atlas IIAS rocket, used to launch its Palapa-C1 satellite
in January 1996, and to purchase insurance policies from March &
McLennan to insure the launch and orbit of the Palapa-C1 and
Palapa-C2 satellites.

Palapa-C2 was launched in May 1996. The Palapa-C series were
supplied by Hughes Space Company, a leading U.S. spacecraft
manufacturer.

The loan guarantee was expected to smooth Satelindo's plan to
float some of its shares on the capital market by July 1998.

The company, set up in January 1994, gained $586 million in
1995 when DeTeMobil of Germany acquired 25 percent of its shares.
Satelindo is 22.5 percent owned by state-owned domestic
telecommunications company PT Telkom, 7.5 percent by state-owned
international telecommunications company PT Indosat, 25 percent
by DeTeMobil and 45 percent by PT Bimagraha Telekomindo. A clause
in DeTeMobil's share acquisition agreement requires Satelido to
list some of its shares within two years of the acquisition.
(icn)