Nortel to set up JVC

JAKARTA (JP): Nortel, a Canadian telecommunications equipment producer, plans to establish a joint venture company in Indonesia to anticipate growing opportunities in the Asian region, particularly in the Indonesian archipelago.

The company's Indonesian country manager, Malcolm Bayes, said here yesterday that Nortel was currently assessing some local companies to be its partner in the joint venture company.

"We are also participating in the cellular tenders currently held by two cellular operators," he said.

He said that Nortel was competing to be the vendor of PT Indosel's Digital Cordless System (DCS)-1800 project and of PT Metrosel's Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) project.

Indosel, a consortium primarily owned by PT Indosat, plans to operate the DCS-1800 in the greater Jakarta area by 1998. Metrosel, which currently operates the AMPS system in Central Java, plans to improve its services with the CDMA.

Unggul S.M. Tampubolon of Indosat said that Nortel is competing with Nokia of Finland and Ericsson of Sweden in the DCS-1800 tender.

Bayes said that Nortel had also supplied equipment related to switching, market data, PABX and transmission to other companies in Indonesia. (icn)