Indonesia’s Telkomsel has revealed plans to spend 12.9 trillion rupiah (€938 million) this year to expand mobile network coverage.
In a recent report by The Jakarta Post, the operator said the money will fund the deployment of a further 15,000 new base stations, increasing the total it aims to roll out in 2015 to 100,000.
"75% [of the base stations] will be to support 3G and the remaining 25% for both 2G and 4G networks," said Telkomsel president Ririek Adriansyah, in the report last week.
The IDR12.9 trillion figure is equivalent to nearly 20% of Telkomsel’s revenue in 2014, said Hendri Mulya Sjam, vice president of LTE projects at Telkomsel, in the report. Last year, Telkomsel generated revenue of IDR66.2 trillion. The company expects revenue to grow 7%-8% this year to IDR71.5 trillion.
Telkomsel said the expansion plan is in line with its ambition to take a 50% share of Indonesia’s LTE market.
According to Hendri, 80 million of the operator’s 140 million-strong subscriber base are 2G customers, while only 250,000 are 4G customers.
"We hope that there will be subscriber migration either from 2G to 3G or from 2G to 4G," Hendri said.
