Telkomsel to Launch 4G Service end of 2014

Tegal (Antara) - PT Telkomsel, the country's largest operator of cellular phone, said it plans to launch telecommunication service with long term evolution network which uses the fourth generation (4G) technology by the end of this year. Currently the subsidiary of state telecommunication company PT Telkom operates with GSM 900-1800 MHz , 3G network. Telkomsel's sales director Ma'sud Khamid said here on Saturday the company, which has more than 122 million subscribers, has been granted the license for the use of the new 4G service by the ministry of communications and information. Ma'sud Khamid said the new service would be launched first in Bali to be followed by the launch in six other biog cities. "We choose Bali because Bali is the most visited place by foreign tourists. Telkomsel wants to show to the world that Indonesia already applied the latest technology in telecommunications," he said. In addition, Telkomsel has succeeded in carrying out an experiment to use LTE network when the APEC summit was held in Bali in 2013, he said. "After Bali, in the first quarter of 2015 the 4G service would be launched in six other big cities in the country including Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Makassar, Yogyakarta, and Manado," Ma'sud said. He said currently the company is preparing network infrastructure to launch the 4G service, which has already been used by a number of other countries. The LTE or 4G service is to improve the quality of Telkomsel's services for its customers that need fast access and data processing. The 4G service offers "theoretical download speed" with a speed of 75-100 Mbps and "typical download speed" with a speed of 3-12 Mbps. "The 4G network could send data with a speed of five times faster than 3G," he said. (*)