P

ublicly listed telecommunications operator PT Smartfren Telecom plans to provide Long-Term Evolution (4G LTE) networks to 22 cities in Indonesia in a bid to fully capitalize on the new broadband network technology.

Smartfren previously rolled out 4G LTE networks in 14 cities with Bali and Batam becoming the first two cities to have the super-fast network connection.

'€œWe have rolled out 14 [4G] LTE in several cities on a trial basis ['€¦] and we will continue to roll out 4G LTE,'€ Smartfren CEO Paul Hodges told reporters recently.

Hodges said that trials were being held in 22 cities before the network was launched publicly. He did not specify when the network would be made available to the public, but company director Roberto Saputra said it would be after they received the trial evaluation result.

'€œWe do not want to be too hasty. We will have to see the trial evaluation results first. If [the results] meet our expectations, then we will launch it commercially,'€ Roberto told The Jakarta Post on the sidelines of the event.

Roberto explained that the company'€™s current focus was to expand the network and to improve its quality. The company hopes to have stable coverage over at least 85 percent of the 22 trial cities before releasing the network for public, he said.

The need to provide a more stable network is even more urgent for Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) providers such as Smartfren, because people already have the wrong perception that CDMA is not as reliable as Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) carriers, Roberto said.

To support the company'€™s ambition of providing a stable 4G LTE network in 22 cities, Smartfren is set to build another 4,000 base transceiver systems (BTS) in addition to the 6,000 BTS it currently has. The BTS units will be built in 2016.

Smartfren, which is now the sole CDMA operator in the country, has signed contracts to develop the LTE network with technology companies ZTE and Nokia, for US$401.98 million and $383.58 million respectively.

Meanwhile, Roberto did not give a specific answer when asked whether the company would charge higher prices for the broadband service. However, he said that Smartfren would focus on driving data consumption instead of increasing prices.

'€œDriving data consumption is our source of revenue,'€ he said.

He added that the launch of the new broadband service would increase data consumption and average revenue per unit (ARPU) '€” an indicator of revenue generation for telecommunications companies '€” by around 30 percent.

Roberto said that his company would not be focusing on increasing the price of new services because, according to his observations, countries that charged higher prices normally had a slower uptake of new broadband services. He cited India as an example.

He said his company would follow South Korea'€™s path of establishing a wide and stable network while still charging reasonable prices.

Major Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) operators PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Selular (Telkomsel), PT XL Axiata and PT Indosat have recently launched 4G services on the 1,800 MHz frequency band in a number of cities.

The new service, which is expected to live up to the ideal 4G speed of 100 megabytes per second (Mbps), will help operators net more data-heavy consumers to eventually boost the industry'€™s ARPU. However, it received a lukewarm response from customers as Internet speeds were considered similar to that of 3G networks.

Indonesia'€™s mobile broadband price hit $2.4 per 500 megabytes (MB), trailing behind Cambodia and India with $2.8 and $3.4, respectively, according to a report from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). (saf)