Jakarta. Mobile broadband operator Bolt! Super 4G LTE is allocating $30 million in capital expenditure to build 1,000 Base Transceiver Stations in the Greater Jakarta area and Medan, North Sumatra, this year, a top executive said on Monday.

The company is currently operating a total of 3,000 stations, said Bolt chief executive Dicky Mochtar.

“By the end of 2015, Bolt will have 4,000 Base Transceiver Stations,” he told reporters on Monday.

One BTS costs approximately $30,000 to build.

The broadband operator, affiliated with the Jakarta Globe through the Lippo Group, aims to dedicate its 2015 capex to BTS development in order to boost Internet speed for its customers. It will join hands with Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei for the endeavor.

Bolt’s sales portfolio is dominated by Mobile WiFi, with a 90 percent contribution. The remainder comes from sales of its Powerphone range of smartphones.

Bolt aims to increase its overall customer base from the current 1.5 million customers to 2.5 million by the end of this year.

Dicky said Bolt is determined to offer the Indonesian market a wide selection of high-quality Powerphones at a reasonable price.

“I believe that is the key for us to compete with other smartphone products,” he added.

The company currently has three Powerphone models on offer: the ZTE V9820, IVO V5 and the E1.

The E1, which launched on Monday, is targeted at the entry-level segment and Bolt aims to sell 120,000 units by the end of this year.

Bolt is operated by Internux, a unit of Indonesian telecommunication and cable television services company First Media.

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Jakarta. Smartphone manufacturer Alcatel Onetouch aims to sell around 200,000 of its Android-based devices in Indonesia this year, banking on the release of four new models through the popular e-commerce site Lazada.

Alcatel Onetouch Indonesia country marketing manager Eko Susanto said on Wednesday that the company would work with Lazada, Indonesia’s largest online shopping site, for the online sales, following the success of an earlier launch.

“This is our second cooperation with Lazada. We have sold 5,000 Onetouch Flash [smartphones] through Lazada. We are optimistic that we can reach our target because our smartphones have a good quality and Indonesians love them,” Eko said.

The company says users have already ordered some 10,000 Alcatel Onetouch Flash Plus smartphones through Lazada, and it plans to offer them again online on Thursday at Rp 1.8 million ($144) each.

Alcatel Onetouch was previously a joint venture between France’s Alcatel-Lucent and China’s TCL. It is now wholly owned by TCL.

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Jakarta. More than four months after their official  release, the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus have finally arrived in Indonesia.

Telkomsel, Indosat and XL Axiata, the nation’s top three mobile phone operators, began offering Apple’s latest products through handset distributors Erajaya and Trikomsel on Friday.

“We are very excited with the launch of iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. Our retail outlets, Erafone and iBox, are ready to not only market Apple’s latest offerings but receive the high number of consumers we are sure they will attract,” said Jeremy Sim, chief executive of Erajaya.

Launched last year on Sept. 19, the “larger, yet dramatically thinner” models of Apple’s revolutionary iPhone devices racked up sales of more than 10 million units in just three days.

Boasting a smooth, metal surface design supported by a new Retina HD display, the iPhone 6 “isn’t simply bigger; it is better in every way,” according to Apple’s official website.

Offering various packages and external memory bonuses, iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 are available at the starting retail price of Rp 10.8 million ($852) and Rp 15.5 million respectively.

Fans and prospective customers have the choice of purchasing their device with an interest-free, monthly installment program that runs for two years and already includes a mobile service package from one of the three providers.

Ririn Widaryani, Telkomsel’s vice president for prepaid and broadband marketing, for said the company was expecting to see a high level of interest from the Indonesian public for the iPhone 6.

Telkomsel, a unit of state-controlled Telekomunikasi Indonesia, is the biggest mobile phone operator in Indonesia by subscriber numbers, which reached 64 million active users. Some 1.5 million of these access Telkomsel’s services through an iPhone.

The mobile phone operator on Friday kick-started a two-day launching event for iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in shopping malls across Indonesia, including Mal Taman Anggrek in West Jakarta; Mal Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta; Gandaria City, South Jakarta; Trans Studio Mall in Bandung, West Java; Tunjungan Plaza in Surabaya, East Java; and Medan Fair, in Medan, North Sumatra.

Denny Galant, head of device management and channels at XL Axiata, said he was optimisticthat the  iPhone 6 would help boost XL’s subscriber numbers.

“XL’s iPhone users are less than a million. But with the iPhone 6, we believe that will increase,” he said.

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