More phone service licenses expected

JAKARTA (JP): The government is expected to license more than one firm to operate the Japanese-made Personal Handyphone Service (PHS) in the country, a telecommunications executive said.

"If the government divides the domestic telecommunications networks into seven areas in the country, it can also divide the PHS networks into several regions, maybe more than five," the president of the state-owned telecommunications equipment manufacturer PT Inti, Arsyad Ismael, told The Jakarta Post yesterday.

Industri Telekomunikasi Indonesia, or Inti, produces a range of telecommunications equipment, including digital telephone exchanges. It has a good chance of winning a license to provide digital wireless telecommunications services in the country, especially since Minister of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications Joop Ave indicated last year that the company was qualified to run one of the new digital cellular systems currently being considered for Indonesia.

Inti, based in Bandung, West Java, is overseen by Minister for Research and Technology B.J. Habibie.

The country currently has the Global System for Mobile (GSM) communications as its only digital cellular mobile telecommunications system. In the meantime, the government is still studying the possibility of allowing the use next generation telecommunication facilities, including the PHS developed by Japan, the DCS-1800 system from Europe and code division multiple access (CDMA) technology from the United States.

Most of the improved digital wireless telephone systems operate at high frequencies between 1,800 and 1,900 megahertz.

While a special team is still studying the appropriate system for Indonesia, a number of private firms have submitted proposals to the government to obtain the necessary licenses.

However, the government has not indicated if it will hold an open tender for the lucrative projects in the near future.

Arsyad said yesterday that the government plans to start soon a pilot PHS project in Surabaya, East Java, and a DCS project in Jakarta.

"Inti will prepare a PHS project in Surabaya later this year. The project is expected to run until December, soon after which the government is expected to hold a tender," he said.

In Japan, PHS services, which were introduced in June 1995, are provided by three consortia.

There are currently more than one million PHS subscribers with service coverage limited to business areas in Japan. (icn)