SURABAYA, Indonesia-Lippo Telecom (LippoTel), Indonesia’s first regional GSM 1800 MHz mobile operator, announced this week it was awarded a license for nationwide operation by acquiring the licenses of five regional operators that could not meet the operational deadline at the end of last year.
LippoTel started its services in mid-2001 and holds the license for the East Java region. Currently, LippoTel counts 62,000 subscribers of which 5 percent are postpaid subscribers. LippoTel has 82 base transceiver stations (BTSs) concentrated in major cities of the region and plans to increase the number of BTSs to 212 this year.
Although the operator did not give an exact date for its massive coverage expansion plan, LippoTel plans to offer mobile commerce and mobile multimedia applications such as multimedia messaging services (MMS) and mobile browsing.
