PT Satelindo installs more stations in Greater Jakarta
PT Satelindo installs more stations in Greater Jakarta
JAKARTA (JP): Private cellular operator PT Satelindo has added
another 100 base transceiver stations to improve its service in
the greater Jakarta area.
A company director, Saleh Gunawan, said yesterday that
Satelindo has activated the new stations that were installed in
July.
"After the installation in Jakarta, Satelindo plans next month
to enter Balikpapan, Samarinda and Bontang -- all in East
Kalimantan -- and later in Ujungpandang, Sulawesi, as well as
Palembang and Medan in Sumatra," he said.
Saleh acknowledged that Satelindo's service has not covered
all of the greater Jakarta area even after the installation of
the new stations.
He explained that with the additional stations, Satelindo's
coverage in the capital city has reached 95 percent and in the
greater Jakarta area 90 percent.
The company's chief operating officer, Ron Chesterton, said
that Satelindo was investing US$100 million to install the
stations in Jakarta and the other cities.
According to Saleh, Satelindo, one of the three operators of
the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) in Indonesia,
currently has 180,000 subscribers in Java and Bali.
Because Jakarta is the key market for cellular
telecommunications service, all of the providers are competing to
provide better services in the capital.
"When we firstly commenced our GSM service in the greater
Jakarta area in November 1994, we had just 54 base transceiver
stations installed. Now the number has reached 450 and we will
increase it up to 550 by 1997," Saleh said.
Satelindo, which is partly owned by DeTeMobil of Germany,
hopes to sign up between 250,000 and 300,000 subscribers by the
end of this year.
The government announced recently that there are currently
some 360,000 mobile cellular telecommunications users in
Indonesia, including 40,000 subscribers to the Nordic Mobile
Telephone (NMT-450) system, 80,000 subscribers to the Advanced
Mobile Phone Service (AMPS) system and 240,000 GSM subscribers.
In addition to Satelindo, the government has licensed PT
Telkomsel and PT Excelcomindo to run GSM services nationwide.
(icn)