Motorola and Indolink First Pacific sign contract

Motorola and Indolink First Pacific sign contract

JAKARTA (JP): PT Indolink First Pacific, a nationwide beeper
operator, yesterday signed a US$1.8-million contract with
Motorola, a telecommunications giant of the United States, for
the purchase of Flex, a new transmission system.

Indolink is controlled by the Hong Kong-based First Pacific
Communications Holdings, in which Salim Group has a stake, and
the employee cooperative of the Ministry of Tourism, Post and
Telecommunications.

Indolink, which started operations in June 1994, currently has
some 25,000 subscribers.

Under the contract signed yesterday, Indolink will acquire
Motorola's C-Net controllers and Nucleus transmitters. C-Net is
the dominant system used in more than 90 percent of Asia's Flex
installations.

Indolink's director, Hendarso Hadiparmono, said that his
company plans to have the Flex system operationally ready by the
third quarter of this year.

The system will introduce a breakthrough technology to the
island of Java, making Indolink the first beeper operator to
provide full coverage for the island.

Hendarso said that Indolink would also use Flex alphanumeric
pagers in the near future.

The Flex system is a standard for high-speed paging and has
been adopted by the major paging operators in the United States,
Canada, Latin America, Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Thailand and Hong Kong.

The government has set a new regulation allowing 10 operators
to serve national radio paging service networks. There are
currently six firms licensed to operate radio paging nationally,
including PT Telematrixindo which operates EasyCall, PT Persada
Komindo which operates Nusa Page and PT SkyTelindo which operates
Skytel.

The other three services are Starpage of PT Duta Pertiwi
Santosa, Telepage of PT Buana Bintangbayu and Indolink.

In addition to the nationwide operations, Indolink, Skytel and
Easycall have been permitted to operate Southeast Asia-wide
paging services.

Competition has since become stiffer among beeper operators in
the country, many of whom are attempting to win the market by
inviting foreign partners to joint them through direct investment
placement or to increase participation in other businesses.

The government has set a target of three million beeper
subscribers by the end of the Sixth Five-Year Development Plan
period in March 1999.(icn)