Telecommunication tower firm PT Inti Bangun Sejahtera Tbk (IBST) is focusing on building telecommunication towers and fiber optic cables in 2022 to accommodate other Indonesian providers. This year, the company will aggressively finish the predetermined targets.
Established in 2006, the company has its main business activity in signal strengthening services in buildings (in-building service provider). The company aims to increase the signal quality inside buildings and develop the potential to fulfill the needs of its operators.
Aggressive business expansion
Inti Bangun sets a target of building 830 telecommunication towers. For now, the company has only had 160 towers in the first half of 2022.
Inti Bangun Chief of Technology Officer (CTO) Hermansyah Bei said the “built to suit” construction projects are for several telecommunications operators – such as Telkom, XL, Indosat, Hutchinson and Smartfren. In addition, there are co-location projects for all these operators.
Quoted from Mitratel website, Built to Suit is a tower or antenna leasing service with build the new micro tower or antenna that have less than 30 meters in heights.
Furthermore, the company has set a target to build a fiber optic construction project spanning for 3,900 kilometers (kms).
“There is an aggressive expansion from these operators in fiber optic cables. We have an existing 16,256kms of fiber optic cables, so the additional construction will reach our target of 20,000kms by the end of 2022,” Inti Bangun Chief Operations Officer VH Susanto said.
The company has a capital expenditure (Capex) in 2022 of around IDR2 trillion to support the construction of towers and fiber optic equipment. The Capex comes from internal and from bank loans although it only said that the company did not need loans from third parties.
“The IDR2 trillion Capex is to support the construction of towers and fiber optic equipment. In Q1 2022, the company has absorbed around IDR1.5 trillion,” said Jozef Munaba, Inti Bangun Chief Financial Officer.
Challenges for telecommunication infrastructure sector
Minister of Communication and Information Technology Johnny G. Plate said there was already more than 330,000kms of fiber optic cables spanning throughout Indonesia, as quoted by Viva.co.id on December 9, 2019.
However, there are still 12,345 regions across the country that do not access to 4G internet, including the planned Nusantara capital city (IKN), Republika.co.id reported.
Plate said Indonesia’s submarine cables are vulnerable to volcanic activity and many Indonesian fiber optic cables have been cut off. Currently, fiber optic technology cannot be replaced with any of the existing technology, so there are many areas that fiber optic cannot penetrate due to the challenges of geography, topography, logistics and so on.
