Private firm to launch radio telephone
JAKARTA (JP): PT Radio Telephone Indonesia (Ratelindo), a private telecommunications operators, will soon run fixed- cellular radio telephones in Greater Jakarta, where the mobile telephone business is expanding rapidly.
Ratelindo's president, Hardianto Kamarga, said that after a trial operation proved successful on Aug. 9, it will launch the radio telephone project on Aug. 23.
"We have installed five cell-sides in the center of the city," he said.
He said that during the launching ceremony, several demonstrations of local, long distance and international calls will be done, including a call to Minister of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications Joop Ave, who is scheduled to be visiting Surabaya in East Java.
Ratelindo is the country's only operator of cellular digital radio telephones (CDRL), the first of their kind built in Indonesia. The company is 55 percent owned by PT Bakrie Electronics Company and 45 percent by the state-owned PT Telkom. Bakrie Electronics is a joint venture between PT Bakrie Communications Corporations of the Bakrie Group and PTT Telecom of the Netherlands.
Ratelindo's target market includes housing complexes, offices, hotels and industrial companies, particularly those located far away from telephone cable infrastructures provided by Telkom.
CDRL will use radio frequencies, not cables, to send signals. Its billing system will be similar to Telkom.
"The market segment of fixed-cellular telecommunications is different from the mobile market, so I am optimistic about the prospect of our business," Kamarga said. "We target to market 50,000 fixed-cellular radio telephone lines by the end of this year."
He said 280,000 lines are expected to be sold within the next four years, 30,000 of which will be marketed in West Java.
Kamarga said that his company has allocated US$90 million for the CDRL project, which will include 79 cell-sides, or base transceiver stations.
Ratelindo, which raised a syndicated loan of Rp 200 billion ($88.3 million) from 11 domestic banks last April, is being assisted by Hughes Network System of the United States in constructing the project.
In addition to Ratelindo, Telkom also plans to run a radio telephone system on Jakarta's outskirts in the next two years to meet the rising demand for telephones.
The government expects to install five million telephone lines in the ongoing Sixth Five-year Development Plan (Repelita VI) after installing nearly three million lines in the Repelita V. About one million of the existing lines are located in Greater Jakarta. (icn)`