Investment in cellular telecommunications US$2.2 billion

Antara News, Tuesday, January 12, 2010 22:33 WIB

Makassar (ANTARA News) - Investment in the cellular telecommunications industry in Indonesia in 2010 is projected to reach US$2.2 billion, with the market estimated to grow by 11 percent.

Telkomsel Coorporate Communications Manager for Pamasuka area Jowvy Kumala said here Tuesday to reach the growth rate efficiency needs to be increased to cut operational cost.

"This industry will embark on the transformation era of combining cellular phones with Internet, video services and other digital products," he said.

Throughout 2009, his office had booked a growth in the number of subscribers to 17 million, bringing the total number of subscribers to more than 82 million. In 2010, his office will serve 100 million subscribers with an increase of new 18 million subscribers.

The total of 82 million subscribers, or 50 percent of the users of cellular services in Indonesia. Of the total, simpati prepaid cards had the highest contribution with 59 million subscribers, followed by As cards 21 million, and prepaid HALO cards 2 million.

Last year`s communications traffic had increased compared to that in 2008. SMS traffic increased by 21 percent from 107 billion to 129 billion short messages last year.

In the meantime, Minutes of Usage (MoU) increased by 203 percent to 273 billion minutes from 90 billion minutes in 2008. Data supply services also increased by 178 percent to 9,125 tera bytes compared to 3,284 tera bytes in 2008.

Broadband mobile services also increased significantly with the number of subscribers increased by 700 percent to 1.6 million subscribers compared to 200,000 subscribers early last year.

With regard to networks, last year saw the building of 3,500 base transceiver stations (BTS), and now reached 30,500 BTS reaching more than 95 percent of the Indonesian population.

This year, all the 24 big cities in Indonesia are expected to fully enjoy this service, for which an investment of Rp 13 trillion would be needed to expand the coverage, increase capacity and improve the quality of networks, and provide new services.