Telkom to add 6 million mobile users a year
Telkom to add 6 million mobile users a year
Bloomberg Jakarta
PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia, the nation's biggest phone company, said its mobile subscribers may grow at an average of about 40 percent a year at least until 2006, aided by a larger network.
Telkom, as the company is called, plans to add about five million to six million users a year by expanding capacity and offering packages to boost its subscriber base, President Director Kristiono said in an interview in Hong Kong.
An expanding economy and a growing market for used handsets are spurring demand for telecommunications services in Indonesia, a nation of 235 million people where fewer than one in eight people have access to a phone. Bandung, West Java-based Telkom spent Rp 2.19 trillion (US$243 million) in the first half to increase its cellular capacity to 14 million users.
"This market is still under penetrated" said Ferry Yosia Hartoyo, an analyst at DBS Vickers Securities in Jakarta, who has a buy recommendation on the stock. "Phone companies can easily gain that many subscribers a year in the next three to four years."
PT Telekomunikasi Selular, the company's biggest cellular unit with about half the market, had 12.4 million cellular users at the end of June. Smaller rival PT Indonesian Satellite Corp. controls 30 percent of the market, while PT Excelcomindo Pratama has about 15 percent. Telkom said earlier it wanted to add as many as five million new mobile subscribers this year, a 52 percent increase from 9.6 million at the end of last year.
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China had 310 million mobile-phone subscribers at the end of June, about a quarter of its population. In Singapore, cellular subscribers account for more than 80 percent of its population.
Telekomunikasi Selular, or Telkomsel, said in June it plans to spend about $600 million to expand its network this year. Indosat last month said it plans to raise spending to $750 million this year to expand its network and boost subscribers to 9.5 million by the end of this year.
Indonesia's $208 billion economy, the biggest in Southeast Asia, is forecast to grow 4.8 percent this year and 5.4 percent next year, the fastest pace in nine years.
Telkom's other mobile unit is PT Mobile Selular Indonesia.