PT Telkom plans to install radio telephone system
PT Telkom plans to install radio telephone system
JAKARTA (JP): The Jakarta office of state-owned telecommunications company PT Telkom plans to introduce a radio telephone system on the city outskirts to help meet the sharply rising demand for telephones.
Outgoing office chief John Welly said yesterday that the system would be introduced by the end of the 1996/1997 fiscal year.
"The radio telephone system is designed to cater for areas which have not yet been reached by Telkom's phone cable network. In the first stage about 70,000 radio telephone lines will be provided," Welly said.
Welly explained that the radio telephones would be sold to interested customers and could be returned to Telkom, for use by other customers, as soon as telephone cables had been installed in the areas concerned.
Welly said installing a radio telephone system was much quicker than installing a conventional one. "It takes only two months to install the radio system, far less than the one-year period needed to install telephone cable infrastructure," he said.
He said the introduction of the radio system was expected to boost the marketing of telephone lines. He guaranteed that the system would not affect the marketing of similar radio telephones by PT Ratelindo, a joint venture between the Bakrie Group and PT Telkom.
PT Ratelindo plans to install a total of 280,000 lines for a digital advanced mobile phone system in Jakarta and West Java within the next three years.
Welly was replaced as office chief by Bambang Riady Oemar yesterday in a ceremony presided over by Telkom's president, Setyanto P. Santosa.
Speaking after the induction ceremony, Setyanto urged the company's offices to aggressively promote the company's telephone lines. He directed these comments at Jakarta which plays, he said, an important role in the world.
The Jakarta office's sales of telephone lines have been poor during the first three months of this year. Its performance in the development sector, by contrast, has been very good.
Welly said that the main problem lay not in the marketing but rather in the completion of projects.
"The demand for telephone lines on the city outskirts remains high, but PT Telkom has not yet been able to meet it, because of non-technical problems," he said.
The Jakarta office plans to build 400,000 telephone lines this year, 80 percent of which will be sold to the public, he said.
Welly urged the office to pursue a new marketing strategy, focusing on crowded areas, such as Jakarta's "golden triangle" business district.
"It is time to make customers, especially companies, install additional lines," he said.
Besides the installation of Bambang as the new chief of the Jakarta office, Setyanto inducted Woeryanto Suradji as Bambang's deputy and Paminto Adji as head of the information system division. (yns)