Via its subsidiary PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia International (Telin) which oversees foreign expansions, Telkom have gained network coverage throughout Malaysia after signing a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) agreement with Malaysian network operator Maxis as host network.

According to Telkom’s CEO, Arief Yahya, Telkom has agreed on a “pay-as-you-go” model with Maxis for rental of the network and will pay rent based on the number of subscriptions they gain.

Although PT Telekomunikasi Selular (Telkomsel) has 125 million subscribers, its ARPU is only Rp 35,000 (US$3.19) whereas the ARPU in Malaysia is Rp 150,000 (U$13.65)

“Given that the average revenue per user (ARPU) is bigger in Malaysia, we will be paying Maxis 60% and keeping the rest ourselves,” Arief Yahya told Jakarta Post, adding that initially the operator aimed to acquire 100,000 subscriptions.

“After the launch, we will need roughly one month to conduct stress tests on our operations before we can go completely commercial, which we target to take place in September,” he said.

The MVNO would focus on the Indonesian community in Malaysia, including migrant workers as its market segment.

“The migrant workers segment in Malaysia is of sizable potential for us considering that there are around 1.5 million formal migrant workers there, in addition to the 3 million informal workers,” said Arief Yahya.

Telkom is also expected to launch MVNO services in Macau and Taiwan later this year and already has operations in Hong Kong and Timor Leste. Hong Kong remained its largest base with 60,000 MVNO subscribers while the remaining 40,000 are from Timor Leste.

Via: Jakarta Post