Indonesia's PT Telkom has announced plans to spend 21.19 trillion rupiah ($2.3 billion) through to 2015 on a national high-speed broadband network project.
The state-owned operator aims to cover 497 cities nationwide with a network providing peak speeds of between 20Mbps and 100Mbps through its “true broadband” project, Jakarta Post said.
The company has already passed around 1.7 million homes through the project, which launched in June, and aims to pass 13 million by end-2015.
PT Telkom is also improving its backhaul infrastructure, and has completed deployment of a fiber backbone spanning over 26,000km, and encircling Sumatra, Java, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Denpasar, Mataram and Kupang.
In addition, Telkom will begin work on its own 5,500km subsea cable system, the Sulawesi and Maluku, Papua Cable System (SMPS), in late 2012.
Announcing the budget for the true broadband project, Telkom president director Rinaldi Firmansyah told local media the additional infrastructure is required to support the operator's transition to its new telecom, information, media and edutainment (TIME) model.
The company aims to boost revenue from information, media and edutainment VAS from 9% in 2011, to 15% by 2015.