Ratelindo to install 50,000 radio phone lines

JAKARTA (JP): PT Radio Telepon Indonesia (Ratelindo), the country's first private cellular digital radio telephone operator, will install 50,000 fixed-cellular telephone lines this year.

The company's marketing director, Remedi Parangin-angin, announced last week that Ratelindo had thus far registered 6,000 subscribers.

Ratelindo, established in 1993 to provide fixed-cellular digital radio telephone services, is 45 percent owned by the state-owned domestic telecommunications operator PT Telkom and 55 percent by PT Bakrie Electronics Company, which is affiliated with the widely diversified Bakrie Group and is 30 percent owned by PTT Telecom BV, a subsidiary of the Dutch-giant KPN Netherlands.

Ratelindo is supplied by Hughes Network System, a subsidiary of Hughes Aircraft of the United States, with a high-capacity fixed wireless digital telephone system for the network operations.

Supported by the two foreign names, Ratelindo is expected to cater to businesses and the general public that are not served by the fixed cable telephone system.

The government has licensed the company to operate in Greater Jakarta and West Java. However, Ratelindo has so far been able to serve only several areas on the edges of the city.

The basic difference between normal telephone services operated by Telkom and the fixed-cellular digital radio telephone services introduced by Ratelindo is in the connection to a telephone exchange. A normal telephone line is connected to an exchange by cable, while a radio telephone line uses airwaves.

Remedi said that the fixed-cellular digital radio telephone lines, the numbers of which start with 9, can be operated just like fixed cable ones.

"All of the terminals used by Ratelindo have been certified by the government," he said.

He said Ratelindo uses two kinds of devices, called multiple subscriber unit and single subscriber unit, which are installed at subscribers' locations.

A multiple subscriber unit can serve up to 96 subscribers and is suitable for housing complexes, offices or markets, while the single subscriber unit is designed for individual subscribers.

The technology applied to such a service is derived from the advanced mobile phone system which is developed in the United States as the extended time division multiple access.

In addition to advanced mobile phone system, there are three other cellular telephone systems adopted in Indonesia, the Global System for Mobile Communications and Nordic Mobil Telephone. Meanwhile, another private cellular mobile telecommunications operator in Indonesia is conducting a trial wireless network using code division multiple access technology, supported by AT&T of the U.S. (icn)