A desire to capture the mobile broadband market led Indonesia’s Bakrie Telecom to launch a separate brand focused on data products and services.
Its wholly-owned subsidiary, Bakrie Connectivity, lays claim to a team which president director Erik Meijer says is focused on gaining ground in Indonesia’s mobile broadband market.
“The parent company Bakrie Telecom serves the mid to low-price market, and it’s not the best idea for a single brand to focus on different market segments,” Meijer said. He claims his company’s target market is ‘anyone who wants to get on the Internet.’
Bakrie Connectivity was launched in June last year and markets its parent company’s CDMA data network which has since been upgraded to 1x-EVDO Rev A.
This standard purportedly separates voice and data lines to give users dedicated data access with speeds reaching up to 3.1Mbps. Network upgrades have reached 19 cities and are ongoing.
“There’s a completely different set of purchase decisions involved between buying mobile phones and Internet products in Indonesia,” Meijer continued, adding that Bakrie Connectivity’s ARPU is two to three times higher than that of Bakrie Telecom’s.
Indonesia’s large population and preference for social media is ideal for the expansion of an operator’s mobile broadband business, Meijer said.
Research from comScore showed that 90% of its sampled audience acccessed social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter, a figure significantly higher than the global average of 70%. comScore's research was limited to users who accessed the Internet with from home or work, and the company's vice president of Southeast Asia Joe Nguyen said the figure was likely to be much higher if mobile Internet users were factored in.