Indonesia’s Bakrie Telkom to invest Rp 2t on expansion

Publicly listed cellular phone provider PT Bakrie Telecom, which operates the CDMA-based esia mobile phone service, plans to expand its coverage to 17 more cities including Surabaya, Medan, Semarang and Yogyakarta this year, in addition to its existing 15 coverage areas in Jakarta, West Java and Banten.

PT Bakrie Telecom Tbk (BTEL), a business unit of Bakrie Brothers, will allocate Rp 2 trillion (about US$222 million) in capital expenditure to finance the company’s expansion this year.

“The money will be raised from financial institutions and internal sources,” the company’s president director, Anindya N. Bakrie, said following a shareholders meeting Thursday.

Anindya said that the new investment funds would be used to double the number of the company’s Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) to 800 BTS from 400 BTS at present.

“We plan to increase the number of subscribers to 3.6 million this year,” he said, adding that in 2006 the company signed up 1.5 million subscribers, more than the targeted 1.3 million.

He said the company now held an 18 percent share of the market in Jakarta, West Java and Banten.

As of November 2006, the telecommunication unit of Bakrie Brothers has earned Rp 704 billion in revenue, a 131 percent increase from the same period last year.

President director of PT Bakrie Brothers, Bobby Gafur Umar, said that he expected BTEL would contribute 30 percent of the widely diversified business group’s total revenues within the next two or three years from 16 percent last year,” he said.

Source: The Jakarta Post

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