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elecommunication tower company, PT Tower Bersama Group (TBIG), said that it would be relying less on acquisitions next year to expand its company in case mobile phone operators refrained from selling towers to the company.

Herman Setya Budi, TBIG’s president director, said the accretion of towers by constructing new ones and purchasing towers from other parties, such as mobile phone operators, had spurred business growth.

“This year, 40-50 percent of the growth in our organization has come from contributions from our organic growth, while the remaining 40-50 percent came from tower acquisitions,” he said.

In the first nine months of this year, TBIG booked revenues of Rp 1.1 trillion (US$114.4 million), a 65 percent increase compared to the amount earned during the same period last year.

The company also booked Rp 920 billion in earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) through September this year, recording a 70 percent increase compared to the amount earned during the same period in 2011.

Herman added that the acquisition of towers from Indosat, with whom the company has settled all payments, had significantly helped the expansion of towers.

The company acquired 2,500 towers in August from Indosat, the second-largest mobile phone operator in the country, bringing the total number of towers owned by the company to 6,714, as of September.

However, although TBIG was “interested” in acquiring more towers from Indosat, he said the company would defer their purchase plans until Indosat, or any other mobile operator, signaled its intention to sell.

In the event of a decrease in tower sales by mobile operators, TBIG would expand their number of towers organically, he added.

“[Mobile] telecommunication companies will still need to have more towers next year in order to increase their coverage areas and capacity,” he said, citing the rapid rise in mobile communication among mobile phone users.

The Communications and Information Ministry predicts that by 2014, Indonesia will have 17 million broadband subscribers, more than double the 7.2 million subscribers in 2010.

TBIG’s telecommunication sites serve 12,953 tenants, 4,369 of whom the company acquired in the third quarter of this year.

Helmy Yusman Santoso, TBIG’s finance director, said the company saw the biggest increase in the number of tenants in the third quarter.

“As many as 3,300 new tenants resulted from the acquisition of Indosat’s towers, while the remaining 1,000 or so came from our organic growth,” he pointed out.

—JP/ Mariel Grazella