Telkom to invest USD215m on internet upgrade

Indonesia’s largest telecoms operator by revenues and subscribers, PT Telkom, plans to invest USD214.9 million to upgrade its internet network and services, The Jakarta Post reports, citing the company’s vice president of marketing and corporate communication, Edi Kurnia, as saying. The monies will be used to upgrade the operator’s main fibre-optic network which is connected to its Speedy Internet broadband service, in order to improve connection speeds. The high speed service is currently available in more than 200 cities, of which 61 have a connection of at least 1Mbps, Edi said. The planned upgrade will allow Telkom to boost its minimum download connection speed for a user from 384kbps to 1024kbps, while minimum upload speeds will be boosted to 128kbps from 64kbps. ‘In line with our 2008 target to increase the number of Telkom Speedy customers to 1.3 million, we plan to finish the upgrades before the end of the year,’ Edi said. Telkom had 337,600 Speedy Internet subscribers at the end of May, up from 241,000 at the start of the year.