PT Indosat gears up for ISO certification
PT Indosat gears up for ISO certification
JAKARTA (JP): The country's international telecommunications operator PT Indosat has said it is seeking ISO-9002 certification this year, in an effort to become a leading global telecommunications carrier.
A company spokesman, J.B. Basuki, said here yesterday that such a certificate would help the company's performance.
The ISO-9002 is one of the six series of guidelines and standards on quality systems introduced by the International Standardization Organization which was established in New York in 1987 by dozens of industrialized countries.
Basuki said yesterday that ISO certification, however, would not be the only target of Indosat because, "as a public company, we have to reach higher growth for corporate value, profit and efficiency."
Indosat floated its shares on the Jakarta and New York Stock Exchanges in 1994. The company's shares closed Rp 25 higher at Rp 8,325 on the Jakarta Stock Exchange (JSX) yesterday.
Last year Indosat made a total profit of Rp 459.4 billion ($197 million), 59 percent more than the previous year.
Basuki said that in addition to the preparations for the ISO certification, Indosat has also applied for the technical standard set by an institute supervised by the Swiss-based International Telecommunications Union.
The standard is vital for technical aspects in the telecommunications industry, including the power of earth stations, microwave and switching circuits, he said.
Indosat will be the first telecommunications operator in Indonesia to get ISO certification. The state-owned telecommunications equipment manufacturer, PT Industri Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Inti), last year gained an ISO-9002 certificate for its management and digital telephone hub production lines.
A research unit of J.P. Morgan in Hong Kong late last year said in a report that Indosat would be among the best performing telecommunications stocks in Asia in 1996.
The report said the company has extremely attractive prospects with a strong position in the profitable international gateway business.
Basuki said yesterday that the successful call ratio (SCR) in international calls in Indonesia reached an average of 65 percent, depending on the networks in the countries which receive the calls using the Indosat code. The current SCR rates of local calls and long distance calls in Indonesia are 53.81 and 46.92 percent respectively. (icn)