Indonesia's Telkomsel will spend nearly $1 billion rolling out new base stations, and has set a target of securing a 50% share of the local LTE market.
Telkomsel has allocated 12.9 trillion rupiah ($993.3 million) towards building 15,000 new base stations, taking its total to 100,000, Jakarta Postreported.
Of the new base stations, 75% will support 3G and the remaining 25% will be for 2G and 4G networks.
The allocated funds represent the equivalent of 18-20% of Telkomsel's revenues for last year. The allocation forms part of parent company Telkom's 23 trillion rupiah capex budget for the year.
Telkomsel has also set a target of growing revenues for this year by 7-8% to roughly 71.5 trillion rupiah.
While Telkomsel offers 4G services in Jakarta, Badung, Surabaya and Medan, it currently only has around 250,000 LTE customers, compared to 80 million on 2G. But the company hopes for a subscriber migration from 2G to either 3G or 4G.
The operator plans to widen the reach of its 4G network, and to partner with handset distributors to market 4G devices in covered areas.