Telkom targets 1.2 million Telkom Flexi customers this year

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

State-owned telecommunications company PT Telkom is targeting some 1.2 million new customers this year for its newly-launched cellular phone service called Telkom Flexi.

Telkom director for business development Garuda Sugardo was quoted by Antara over the weekend as saying that demand for the new service had been very strong.

He pointed out that last year, the company managed to sell some 500 Flexi lines despite its early debut.

Garuda said that to support the greater number of customers, Telkom would develop some 529 BTS (base transceiver station) in 51 cities around the country.

Telkom Flexi is a CDMA (code division multi access)-based cellular phone service, which uses the cheaper rates of fixed- line telephones.

The new service is seen as a threat by most providers of GSM (global system for mobile communications)-based cellular phone operators. The result has been a price war that has seen subscription rates and rates for communicating via GSM cellulars fall.

With various superior features, like a data transmitting speed of 144 kilobytes per second, voice quality similar to fixed-line telephones, texting, voice mail, calling line identification (CLI) and many other facilities, Telkom Flexi is quickly making significant inroads in the telecommunications market, especially because the rates applied are the same as those for fixed-line telephones.

Elsewhere, Garuda said that in the future, Telkom would no longer develop the fixed-wireline telecommunications system because of the high production cost.

He said that Telkom would focus on CDMA technology instead.