Telkom sees rising broadband accounts

Dewi Santoso, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

State-owned telecommunications company PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom) projected that the number of its broadband users this year would surge to 50,000 from last year's 3,000.

Telkom president Kristiono said on Thursday that the company had long been developing its broadband service, and would continue to focus on developing the technology.

"I predict that the number of broadband users will reach 50,000 people from the previous 3,000," said Kristiono.

Broadband is a transmission facility with a bandwidth sufficient to carry multiple voice, video or data channels simultaneously over a single communications medium, typically using some form of frequency or wave division multiplexing.

It currently has cable modem and digital subscriber line (DSL) services, and offers a "24-hour, 7-day-a-week" internet connections at higher speeds than dial-up connections, allowing computer users to download manuals, diagrams and videos clips, at up to 600 kilobytes per second (kbps).

Kristiono said that broadband service was only available in Jakarta and Surabaya as not all regions were equipped with appropriate cables.

He added that the cost of investing in broadband was around US$50 per unit.

Meanwhile, for Telkom Flexi, he expected the number of users to more than double, reaching up to 1.5 million this year, as compared to 600,000 last year.

Telkom Flexi is a cellular service that uses fixed wireless with code division multiple access (CDMA) technology.

The cost of investing in Telkom Flexi, Kristiono said, was around $200 per unit.

"TelkomFlexi is more expensive than broadband as we have to build everything from scratch, whereas for the latter, we can use the already provided cables," he explained.