Foreign investors reap Rp 470 t in telco business annually; study

A study shows that foreign investors reap Rp 470 trillion (US$52.2 billion) from the country’s telco industry annually.

Director of Center for Indonesian Telecommunications Regulations Study (CITRUS) Asmiati Rasyid said that the revenues came from various businesses in the telecommunications sector.

She explained that mobile terminal business contributed Rp 200 trillion per year, followed by mobile services business of Rp 150 trillion, network devices business of Rp 80 trillion and mobile application business of Rp 40 trillion.

In contrast with those benefits, she added, telco sector workers only received a small portion of the cake, worth only Rp 100 billion per annum.

“Indonesian people are only consumers in this industry,” she said on Wednesday as quoted by tribunnews.com.

Asmiati said that the mobile terminal and network device businesses were controlled by global players like Samsung, Motorola, Apple, RIM, Nokia, ZTE and Huawei.

Telecommunications operators in Indonesia were partially owned by foreign investors, such as Axis, Tri, Indosat and XL Axiata. 35 percent of the country’s market leader Telkomsel is also owned by foreign investors, she said.