TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Smartfren allots US$100 million capex to patch blank spots
Change Size
Smartfren president director Merza Fachys (left) and finance director Antony Susilo speak at a press conference in Jakarta on June 29, 2016. (thejakartapost.com/Anton Hermansyah)
S
inarmas Group’s Smartfren Telecom has allocated US$100 million in capital expenditure (capex) this year, aiming to cover the blank spots in its service coverage.
The publicly listed company will proceed with the undisbursed lending facilities from China Development Bank worth $180 million of the total loan commitment secured in September 2015 worth $300 million.
"We will use $100 million this year, and the remainder $80 million can be allocated for 2017," Smartfren Telecom finance director Antony Susilo told thejakartapost.com on Wednesday in Jakarta.
He acknowledged that the capex allocation was relatively flat compared to last year’s as the company was not ambitious about expansion. The firm converted Rp 7.5 trillion ($568.2 million) debt into shares, lowering its debt-to-equity ratio from 3 times in 2014 to 2.05 times in 2015.
Last year, Smartfren upgraded 6,000 base trans-receiver stations (BTS) into 4G LTE (long-term evolution) network and cleaned up its 1900 Mhz CDMA (code division multiple access) network.
"Now we have 9,025 BTS in total. It is enough, and currently we are surveying the area where blank spots still appear," Smartfren Telecom president director Merza Fachys said. (ags)
