JAKARTA, Indonesia—Inquam, a venture company backed by Qualcomm, has marked its presence in Indonesia through an acquisition of Mobile Selular Indonesia (Mobisel) shares.
Prior to the Inquam acquisition, the share composition in Mobisel was largely held by Amir Abdullah Rachman, president of Mobisel, and the remaining 25 percent was held by Telkom, the country’s dominant telecommunications operator. With the acquisition, Inquam is now the major shareholder in Mobisel, representing 90 percent of the shares, while the remaining 10 percent is still held by the previous majority shareholders.
Mobisel needs about US$200 million to completely migrate its analog NMT 450 MHz network to CDMA. The injection of US$45 million from Inquam will be used for rolling out CDMA 450 MHz service in Bali and the country’s capital, Jakarta, in April 2002.
According to Telkom, Mobisel had 10,905 subscribers as of the third quarter of 2001, with about 70 percent of this number in rural areas. This figure represents -21.26-percent growth during the same period last year. The country’s analog subscribers, including Mobisel’s customers, counted 140,581, representing only 2.65 percent of the country’s total cellular subscribers, which are dominantly GSM 900 MHz and 1800 MHz users.
The announcement represents Inquam’s second acquisition of an NMT operator for the purpose of migrating an NMT 450 MHz network to CDMA-based services. Inquam purchased the majority shares of Romania’s Telemobil in October 2000 with plans to roll out CDMA 450 MHz service in that country by the end of this year.
