Motorola ties up with Indonesian beeper firm

Motorola ties up with Indonesian beeper firm

JAKARTA (JP): The United States-based telecommunications and
electronics giant Motorola reached a deal yesterday with PT Duta
Pertiwi Santosa, a private firm operating the Starpage beeper
service, to set up a joint radio paging venture.

The two companies signed the agreement to establish PT
Dutasejahtera Komunikatama with an investment of US$10 million
and plans to take over the beeper service operated by Duta
Pertiwi Santosa.

Duta Pertiwi's director and commissioner, Karna Brata Lesmana,
said that the new company is 70 percent by Duta Pertiwi and 30
percent by Motorola, which paid $3 million for the shares.

"Through this partnership we promise to provide better service
to cope with the increasingly competitive radio paging business."

Duta Pertiwi is 10 percent owned by the Indonesian Foundation
of Technology Education, 70 percent by Karna and 20 percent by a
company executive, Rachmat Sumengkar. Established in 1986, the
company currently has total assets of $10 million and 70,000
subscribers.

Karna said that with Motorola as a partner, he hoped to net
100,000 subscribers with an annual growth rate of 40 percent.

Motorola, with revenues of more than $27 billion, is one of
the world's leading telecommunications equipment manufacturers
running a number of plants in Asia.

"There are currently more than 80 radio paging providers in
Indonesia. Out of the country's nearly 200 million population,
there are currently only 450,000 beeper users," Karna said,
adding that the market is still wide open.

In addition to Duta Pertiwi, at least five radio paging
providers are partly owned by overseas parties. PT Telematrixindo
with the EasyCall brand is partly owned by an Australian-Hong
Kong firm; PT SkyTelindo with Skytel is partly owned by
Singaporean and U.S. telecommunications firms; PT Indolink First
Pacific with Indolink, which is partly owned by a Dutch firm; and
PT Buana Bintangbayu whose Telepage is partly owned by a Japanese
company.

The government hopes to reach three million beeper subscribers
by the end of the ongoing Sixth Five-Year Development Plan
period, which ends in March 1998. Ninety new licenses will be
extended by the government to qualified firms based outside of
Jakarta to operate local paging services.

The government is also encouraging investors to set up
assembly plants for radio paging equipment in the country.

Karna said that the new company will only operate a radio
paging service and not enter the beeper manufacturing business.

The president of PT Motorola Indonesia, the marketing arm of
Motorola in the country, Larry Ohlrogge, said that: "We're
looking for the possibility in the future to do production in
Indonesia but we are waiting for the right opportunity, depending
on the international market."

Motorola has three factories in Malaysia producing
semiconductors and trunked radios, as well as radio paging
factories in Singapore, China and India, he said.

The company has just opened a $99 million semiconductor plant
in Carmona, the Philippines, whose products are used for such
wireless telecommunications equipment as beepers, cellular
telephones and portable two-way radios.

Motorola's vice president for the Asia-Pacific, Edmund J.
Reilly, said that his company controlled a 60 percent share of
the Indonesian radio paging market and more than 60 percent
worldwide. (icn)