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The company is already Indonesia’s largest tower company, with over 37,000 towers across the island nation
This week, Indonesian towerco Mitratel has announced the acquisition of 803 new telecoms masts from local infrastructure firm Gametraco Tunggal.
The deal, valued at $113 million, will see the towers added to Mitratel’s existing 37,000 towers across the country, notably expanding their geographic reach on islands beyond Java.
The towers bring with them 1,327 new tenants for Mitratel.
“Expanding the market outside of Java island has been the strategic plan of telco companies … which aligned with the needs of internet connectivity in the region,” said Mitratel President Director Theodorus Ardi Hartoko at a press conference earlier this week. “We noticed the opportunity from telco operators’ expansion strategy will be mainly in Sumatra in the near future, and further to eastern Indonesia, such as Papua and Maluku, in the longer run.”
This acquisition comes just two years after the company raised $1.76 billion from an initial public offering. Since then, Mitratel has used these funds to expand its infrastructure empire, particularly via the purchase of over 600km of fibre optic networks to support their tower operations.
This fibre backbone, Hartoko says, will be crucial for enabling the nation’s nascent 5G networks to grow comfortably.
“The acquisition of optical fiber is one of the right steps in supporting the acceleration of the fiberisation process which is also part of the acceleration towards 5G adoption which is Mitratel’s main target in the next few years as an effort to support Indonesia’s digital sovereignty,” said Hartoko of the acquisition at the start of this year.
Indonesia has been slow to enter the 5G era, with the government delaying processes to allocate the necessary spectrum.
The government currently expects to conduct a 5G auction for spectrum in the 700MHz and 26GHz spectrum bands in August next year.
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