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Telkom set to spend trillions on upgrade
PT Telkom, the country's largest telecommunications company, has allocated Rp 2 trillion (US$214
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PT Telkom, the country's largest telecommunications company, has allocated Rp 2 trillion (US$214.9 million) to upgrade its Internet services.
"The funds will be used to upgrade our main fiber-optic network, which is connected to our Speedy Internet service, to improve connection speeds," Edi Kurnia, vice president of marketing and corporate communication, said Tuesday.
Edi said Telkom Speedy, the company's broadband Internet service, now reaches more than 200 cities, 61 of which have a connection speed of at least 1 megabyte.
"But the connection speeds in these 61 cities are not evenly spread. Some are still experiencing lower connection speeds. The upgrades should allow more people to connect faster," Edi said.
He said the upgrades would increase Telkom Speedy's minimum download connection speed to 1024 kilobytes per second (Kbps) from 384 Kbps, and its minimum upload speed to 128 Kbps from 64 Kbps.
"In line with our 2008 target to increase the number of Telkom Speedy customers to 1.3 million, we plan to finish the upgrades before the end of the year," Edi said.
As of the end of last month, Telkom Speedy had 337,600 customers.
Telkom president Rinaldi Firmansyah said the Rp 2 trillion formed part of the company's plans to facilitate national telecommunications with mobile technologies that combine voice, visual and data transfer.
"This investment is included in this year's capital budget of Rp 23 trillion," Rinaldi said after opening the Indonesia Synchronized 2014 conference and exhibition in Jakarta, as quoted by Antara news agency.
Telkom's Palapa Ring project, an 11,000 kilometer-long fiber-optic network connecting Indonesia's main islands, is still underway.
Telkom network and solutions director Ermady Dahlan said the company would complete its fiber-optic network in Java by August 2008 and the networks in Sulawesi and Kalimantan in the second quarter of 2009.
The company has finished its fiber-optic network in Sumatra.
"Once we're done building these fiber-optic networks, the national Internet bandwidth capacity will be much bigger, enabling us to reduce Internet tariffs," Ermady said.
According to data from the Indonesia Association of Internet Users, by the end of last year, 25 million people in the country will use an Internet service. (anw)
