Salim enters paging service and television

Salim enters paging service and television

JAKARTA (JP): Through its Hong Kong-based subsidiary, Salim
Group, the country's major conglomerate, enters the radio paging
service in cooperation with the cooperative of the employees of
the Ministry of Tourism, Post and Telecommunications.

The secretary General of the ministry, Jonathan Parapak,
introduced PT Indolink First Pacific (IFP) at a party held at Le
Meridien hotel here on Saturday evening.

The company, established with an investment of US$10 million,
is 80 owned by First Pacific Communications Holdings (FPCH) BV of
the Netherlands, in which Salim Group has a stake, and 20 percent
by the cooperative.

Salim Group, owned by Indonesia's richest businessman Liem
Sioe Liong, controls a stake at First Pacific in Hong Kong, which
operates cellular telecommunications and paging services.

The cooperative has an option to acquire more shares in IFP
gradually within 20 years until its stake becomes a majority.

IFP's operational director, Bruce Crandall, said that
Indolink, the company's brand for the paging service, is ready
for competition in the paging industry.

The government has so far licensed 39 companies to operate
local radio paging services, 27 of which cooperate with the
state-owned domestic telecommunications monopoly PT
Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom) and four others operate
nationwide radio paging services, including those branded SkyTell
and EasyCall. The government will allow only five operators to
serve nationwide radio paging and just one paging company with
international services, which has not been chosen yet.

IFP, scheduled to launch its service this month, will firstly
operate in Jakarta, Bandung of West Java and Surabaya of East
Java.

Broadcasting

Meanwhile, a Salim Group executive, John B. Pasaribu, said
that Indosiar Visual Mandiri, a television station owned by the
group, will likely delay the start of its broadcasting from the
original schedule of this month due to technical problems.

Pasaribu, who is in charge for computer and communication
systems, said there are technical problems related to frequency
signals in several cities and frequency jams which occur at
certain intervals.

Indosiar will be on air in the 41 ultra high frequency.

The country currently has five television broadcasters,
comprising of Rajawali Citra Televisi Indonesia (RCTI), Televisi
Pendidikan Indonesia (TPI), Cakrawala Andalas Televisi (Anteve),
the state-owned Televisi Republik Indonesia (TVRI) and Surabaya
Centra Televisi (SCTV) in Surabaya, East Java.

The government has also licensed four other companies to
operate in television broadcasting, including PT Sanitya Mandara
Televisi in Yogyakarta, PT Merdeka Citra Televisi Indonesia in
Semarang, Central Java, PT Ramako Indotelevisi in Batam, Riau,
and PT Cakrawala Bumi Sriwijaya Televisi in Palembang, South
Sumatra.(icn)