Syahrial Ali’s Blog

JAKARTA/DUBAI, June 26 (Reuters) - Indonesia’s Bakrie group plans to buy a 10-15 percent stake in PT Indosat Tbk ISAT.JK, the country’s second-largest mobile phone firm, in the open market, sources familiar with the deal said.

The plan comes as Qatar Telecom (Qtel) QTEL.QA, which this month increased its stake in Indosat to 40.8 percent, confirmed that it would offer to buy the remaining shares in Indosat at 7,388 rupiah apiece, or a total of $2.6 billion.

Bakrie executives recently told investors that the firm planned to buy 10-15 percent of Indosat in the open market and hoped to increase its stake, sources said. One of the sources close to the group said the plan was at an early stage. <more, reuters>;

News taken from SDA Asia Magazine

The CDMA Development Group (CDG) announced that as of Q1 2008, Indonesia had more than 16.3 million CDMA2000 subscribers.

According to Perry LaForge, executive director of the CDG, Indonesia has emerged as a prime showcase of CDMA2000’s core value proposition. “With a dynamic combination of ultra low-cost handsets and value-added broadband services, Indonesia’s six CDMA operators have boosted their revenue streams and propelled the region into the spotlight for mobile telephony and Internet growth,” said LaForge.

Currently, Indonesia’s CDMA2000 operators are Telkom Flexi (PT Telkom), StarOne (Indosat), Smart Telecom, Fren (Mobile-8 Telecom), Esia (Bakrie Telecom) and Ceria (Sampoerna Telekomunikasi Indonesia or STI).

By March 2008, the total number of CDMA2000 subscribers among all six carriers exceeded 16.3 million, up from 14.4 million at the end of 2007 and 7.8 million at the end of 2006, representing annual growth rates of 53 percent and 85 percent, respectively.

On the other hand, A.R. Martirez, Chief Executive Officer of PT Smart Telecom said that with CDMA2000, they are confident in providing a telecommunication service that is within reach by all people from all levels of society. This proves that CDMA2000 can readily fulfill all telecommunication wants and needs of customers in this country.

JAKARTA, Jun 09, 2008 (Xinhua via COMTEX) — Singapore Technologies Telemedia ( STT) Pte Ltd has announced it would sell a 40.8 percent stake in Indonesia’s major cellular firm PT Indosat to Qatar Telecom (Qtel), local press said Monday.

STT and Qtel have earlier established a joint subsidiary, Asia Mobile Holdings (AMH), which controls the Indosat stake.

However, the Indonesian Business Competition Supervisory Commission (KPPU) said that the deal could violate a Jakarta district court ruling which required a buyer to acquire no more than 10 percent, reported English-language daily The Jakarta Post.

Under the deal, STT will no longer have any involvement in Indosat, Indonesia’s second-largest telecommunications company.According to STT, “Qtel has agreed to pay the equivalent of 1.8 billion US dollars in cash to acquire AMH’s entire interest in Indosat.”

The move followed a recent Central Jakarta District Court ruling that found Singapore’s major investment firm Temasek and its subsidiaries, including STT, guilty of anti-competitive behavior in Indonesia’s telecommunications industry.

The ruling upheld a KPPU decision last November stating that Temasek and its units had violated anti-monopoly laws, particularly on cross-ownership.

In addition to owning STT, Temasek also owns a 54.14 percent stake in SingTel, which holds a 35 percent stake in PT Telkomsel, the country’s largest cellular phone operator.

The Central Jakarta court fined Temasek and its units, Telkomsel and Indosat, 15 billion rupiah (1.6 million dollars) and gave Temasek a choice of relinquishing at least 50 percent of its shares in both Telkomsel and Indosat or letting go of all shares in either company within two years after the verdict was issued.

The court added that Temasek could sell up to 10 percent of its shares to an individual buyer, higher than the maximum 5 percent mandated by the KPPU.

Temasek and subsidiaries are currently waiting for a final decision from the Supreme Court on their appeal of the district court ruling.

KPPU member M. Iqbal said the sale, as outlined in the press statement, would violate the court ruling.

“The court ordered that each buyer was allowed to acquire up to a 10 percent stake. Therefore, selling a 40.8 percent stake in Indosat should involve four buyers, not just Qtel,” Iqbal told the newspaper.

However, he said, “the KPPU will not react to the divestment plan, and will let the Supreme Court decide whether it is legal or not.”

As written in indonesian-cellular-too-many-carriers, currently there are so many operators and wireless technologies operated in Indonesia. So that, the development of wireless telecommunication business in Indonesia is extremely fast. Mobile phone has become the primary device for communication.

After that, tariff war was happened and the demand for mobile communications rise sharply.

The impacts were not only for new users, but also for current users. As the users increase sharply, some operator networks are not ready to handle all the traffics. Thus, we experienced many unsuccessful calls, call drops, call congestion etc since then. Thus the cellular businesses advancements have sacrificed several quality of services.

To overcome this situation, the Indonesian ministry of information and communication will release some new regulations concerning the minimum standard quality of services shortly. This regulation has been prepared very carefully since last year. Public consultation has also been performed.

The QoS in telecommunication industry is measured from the perspective of an expert, for instance teletraffic engineers, who are mostly from service provider itself. Will they give an honest information?

I believe that there will be a task force from directorate general post and telecommunication who will also perform ad-hoc quality measurement. And the measurement result from both parties (DG Postel and Service Provider) will be different for sure.

Is there any solution for this issue?

Yes, we have to find a tool which is installed in every users phone and reported its status to the server. In this case, the measurement will have a fair result and no way for service provider to escape.