Skyscrapers to act as BTS towers

Mustaqim Adamrah ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Sat, 07/05/2008 12:21 PM  |  City

Jakarta's spatial planning agency will allow base transceiver stations to be attached to the tops of buildings to reduce the number of BTS towers in the capital.

Agency head Wiriyatmoko said Thursday the agency had determined several areas, including Jl. Sudirman in Central Jakarta and South Jakarta, Jl. Thamrin in Central Jakarta and Jl. Rasuna Said in South Jakarta, where numerous high-rise buildings are located.

Areas with large concentration of high-rises are called "white areas", he said.

"There will be BTS devices attached to the tops of buildings, say, in 250 different locations situated in the white areas," Wiriyatmoko said at City Hall.

He said the agency had made the option available for cellular operators, which would be required to share monopole BTS towers.

"A monopole BTS tower needs to be built around 40-50 meters above the ground to work correctly. Otherwise, the signal will be blocked by high-rise buildings," he said.

The Jakarta administration plans to replace between 2,500 and 3,000 existing BTS towers with 850 newer monopole towers.

The newer towers will be occupied by at least two cellular operators, as stipulated in a 2001 gubernatorial decree on tower-sharing, which is backed by a 2008 regulation from the Communications and Information Ministry.

Jakarta's property management and control agency stopped issuing licenses for new towers in 2006 and has taken down 75 illegally built BTS towers.

In 2006, the licenses for 1,508 towers expired but were temporarily extended earlier this year as the authorities wait for the completion of tower-sharing studies, which will be available by the end of this year.

There are at least 2,750 towers in need of temporary licenses, which will expire when the administration starts implementing the new monopole towers.

Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory Agency member Heru Sutadi has warned that the administration's plan to dismantle BTS towers could cause all cellular connections to be disrupted as operators may be forced to move from one BTS tower to another.

He also said the plan was a breach of the 2008 ministry of communications regulation that says "old cellular operators should strengthen their towers by 2010 to share them with new players in anticipation of additional load".

Several cellular operators have said they support the city administration's monopole plan, although they claim to have received very little information on the switch.

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