Indonesia wanted 4 telecommunication operators

Ilustrasi (dok)

JAKARTA (IndoTelko) - Minister of Communications and Information Technology (MCIT) Rudiantara claims that he is still optimistic to shrink the number of Indonesian telecommunications players to be only four by 2018.

"I am preparing the network sharing regulation by the end of this month. Network sharing was the beginning of the consolidation in the industry to seek for efficiency. I am optimistic that in 2018 there were only four operators in Indonesia," said Rudiantara in the year end discussion with IndoTelko Forum,"4G, What's Next?" here, Monday (7/12).

The current existing operators are Telkom Group, Indosat, XL Axiata, Tri Indonesia, Smartfren, Bakrie Telecom, and Sampoerna Telecom Indonesia.

Rudiantara said that, after the regulation is issued in the form of Minister's Regulation for network sharing, then later will be seen which players consolidating or play alone. More mechanisms also provided in business-to-business (B2B) scheme.

"Later will be seen which operators is willing to share or not, it will be reflected in each market caps. The regulation, the sharing can be done for active infrastructure just what XL and Axis did. Maybe it needs to be more extreme, the frequency pooling? It can be done as long as they must increase their industry efficiency that can be enjoyed by the costumers and industry, so be it," Rudiantara said.

Further, Rudiantara emphasized that efficiency and broadband industry is part of the main focus of building a digital ecosystem. "Both are related to the needs of the community, because we care," Rudiantara said.

In response, Smartfren President Merza Fachys supports the idea of infrastructure sharing, or even the frequency pooling if necessary. "Do not half-hearted on this, share it up to the maximum so it would all be efficient," Rudiantara said. (es)