Station 12, Indosat tie up in Inmarsat service

JAKARTA (JP): State-owned telecommunications company PT Indosat will expand its mobile telecommunications service's coverage to the Atlantic Ocean through a cooperation with a company called Station 12, according to the Indosat's top executive.

Indosat's division head for the Jakarta area S. Wimbo S. Hardjito said by using earth stations owned by Station 12, Indosat could expand the coverage of its Inmarsat (International Maritime Satellite) service, known as Indosat Geo-7, to the Atlantic Ocean, including the United States

The Inmarsat service enables people to communicate from ships at sea, aircraft in flight and remote areas with small satellite antennas.

"This will increase Geo-7's coverage to about 98 percent of the earth," he told reporters on the sidelines of the company's meeting with customers here.

Wimbo said Geo-7 currently only covered the Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean.

Station 12, which is a joint venture owned by Netherlands' KPN and Australia's Telstra, is considered the world's largest Inmarsat operator, according to Wimbo.

Indosat's Inmarsat telecommunications traffic, which are currently transmitted through the earth station in Jatiluhur, West Java, will be transferred to Station 12's earth stations in Perth, Western Australia, and Burum in the Netherlands.

"We think the Jatiluhur station will not be able to keep up with rapidly changing technology," Indosat's assistant manager for product development Firman Supriadi said.

Inmarsat service is popular among mining, energy and fishing companies.

Wimbo said the company had about 200 corporate subscribers, mostly oil and gas companies.

Indosat's earnings from the Geo-7 totals more than US$50,000 a month, with a subscriber fee of about $25 a month and telephone rate of between $2.7 and $5 a minute.

Indosat also announced on Wednesday that it had signed an agreement with Nava Networks Ltd.. This will allow the latter to install 9,000 kilometers of broadband marine cables, linking Singapore, Jakarta and Singapore, for Indosat.

The agreement was signed by Indosat's president Hari Kartana and Nava's director for the Asia region Jim Schweigert on Tuesday, the company said in a statement.

The installment of the cable network is to be finalized in 2002, the company said.

Nava-1 will have a bandwidth of 2.56 terabit per second, which is equivalent to 40 million sound circuits, it said. (tnt)