PT Ariawest welcomes MediaOne-AT&T merger

JAKARTA (JP): PT Ariawest International said the merger of its U.S.-based parent company MediaOne Group with American telecommunications giant AT&T will further strengthen its Indonesian operation.

Ariawest said that with the merger, the company's operation in Indonesia would be backed by two telecommunications giants.

"This positive news comes at an exciting time for the Indonesian telecommunications industry and will bring benefits for many years," the company said in statement over the weekend.

Ariawest -- which is 35 percent owned by MediaOne Group, through its MediaOne International B.V., 52.5 percent by local company PT Artimas Kencana Murni and 12.5 percent by Hong Kong's Asian Infrastructure Fund -- is one of state-owned PT Telkom's five joint operation partners.

The five companies were appointed by Telkom to finance, build and operate two million new access line (ALUs) -- later revised to 1.2 million -- in Sumatra, West Java, Central Java and Yogyakarta, Eastern Indonesia and Kalimantan until 2010 under the revenue-sharing scheme.

Under the KSO agreement, the partners are also required to pay Telkom a three-monthly fixed amount of Minimum Telkom Revenue (MTR) and Distributable Telkom Revenue (DTR) payments based on their revenue generation.

Ariawest's latest report said as of March 31 this year it had installed 299,458 ALUs across its working area in West Java and paid Telkom Rp 992.7 billion in MTR and Rp 74.6 billion in DTR.

Meanwhile, Associated Press reported from Washington that AT&T planed to buy MediaOne, a deal that would create the nation's largest cable TV company and provider of high-speed cable Internet services. The move "warrants very careful scrutiny," the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chief said on Friday.

The US$58 billion deal's size, complexity and its potential reach into American homes must be studied, FCC chairman Bill Kennard said, in his first comment on the matter.

Under an agreement reached Tuesday, AT&T would acquire the nation's fourth-largest cable TV company, MediaOne, and its 5 million cable TV customers. AT&T also would acquire MediaOne's 25 percent stake in cable systems owned by Time Warner Inc., the nation's largest cable TV company. (cst)