Publicly listed telecommunication infrastructure provider PT Solusi Tunas Pratama (SUPR) plans to expand its fiber-optic network in the country's first-tier cities in anticipation of the rising use of long-term evolution (LTE) technology, better known of 4G.
SUPR president director Nobel Tanihaha said following a recent shareholders' meeting that his firm would spend up to Rp 18 billion (US$1.56 million) on 1,000 kilometers of fiber-optic cable, giving his company a total 3,200-km fiber-optic cable network by year-end.
“We will install the cables mostly in Greater Jakarta and Bandung, West Java,” he said, adding that SUPR aimed to also expand its fiber-optic network to Medan, North Sumatra; Bogor, West Java, and Surabaya, East Java.
Nobel said he expected demand for fiber-optic networks in the country's cities to surge in three to five years, driven by a growing use of 4G for Internet data use.
The number of mobile data subscribers in the country is predicted to reach 125 million by 2017 from around 60 million last year, according to the Association of Indonesian Internet Providers (APJII).
“With the positive outlook of the country's data use, which is likely to shift toward using 4G, we expect our non-tower business [fiber optics and micro cell] to contribute around 50 percent of our total revenue in the next three or five years,” Nobel said, adding that the business division currently contributed only 9 percent of his firm's revenue, while the remaining 91 percent came from its tower business.