Telkom awards Ericsson with broadband contract

Telkom awards Ericsson with broadband contract

Leony Aurora, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Indonesia's largest telecommunications company PT Telkom has
awarded Ericsson a contract to provide broadband technology and
related services to its customers in Surabaya, East Java.

The Swedish-based company will provide an ethernet digital
subscriber line access solution, which is able to deliver data,
voice and video simultaneously to customers.

"There is already a very small number of lines -- lower than
1,000 -- available in Surabaya," PT Ericsson Indonesia president
Mitch Lewis told The Jakarta Post on Wednesday.

He declined to disclose the value of the contract.

Telkom launched its broadband service, called Speedy, in July
and is aiming to provide 40,000 connections in Jakarta, and
10,000 in Surabaya in the first phase of the project. It has
allocated US$15 million for the service's infrastructure, or
between $290 and $300 per line.

Speedy uses customers' fixed telephone network which has been
upgraded to a high-speed digital one. The download speed is
between 384 kilobytes per second (kbps) and 512 kbps, much higher
than the dial-up system used mostly across the country, which is
56 kbps.

Speedy customers can also use the telephone simultaneously
with Internet without the two services interfering with one
another.

"There'll be some promotions of Speedy in schools and
universities (in Surabaya) in the coming months," said Lewis.

Telkom plans to convert its network's infrastructure broadband
capacity gradually to reach 2 million lines by 2008.

According to Telkom's unaudited third quarter report, as of
Sept. 30, there are already 11,832 broadband lines available and
54 percent of them, or 6,389 connections, have been sold.

Telkom is a publicly listed company based in Bandung. It
reported a 14 percent surge in net profit during the first nine
months of this year to Rp 5.02 trillion ($557 million) from Rp
4.41 trillion in the same period last year.

Analysts believe it was due to the result of higher revenue
booked by the company from its cellular -- PT Telkomsel -- and
fixed-line businesses.