Riding the data surge

Best Emerging Markets Carrier	XL Axiata
Last year's winner:	Smart Communications
Shareholders:	Axiata Group Berhad through Axiata Investments
Business segments:	Mobile voice and data
Chairman & CEO:	Hasnul Suhaimi
Key stats (2012):	45.8 million total subscriptions; revenue of 21.3 trillion rupiah ($2.2 billion), up 15%; profit of $285 million

Last year XL outperformed the Indonesian market in terms of revenue, mainly on 50% year-on-year growth in the data business followed by a 16% jump in SMS.

This gave XL a much stronger foundation, with further investments made to enhance the data infrastructure for better service quality.

With such strong take up and a huge upside for data in the country, XL accelerated efforts related to 3G network construction, expanding its investment 168% to support data services development. Various other efforts were also made, such as increasing the capacity of backhaul, core and backbone, to ensure the quality of the end-to-end network infrastructure.

The company is now building up for future business development with digital services, including content and applications, mobile finance, mobile advertising, machine to machine and cloud computing. While its digital services are still in incubation on the introductory stage, XL CEO Hasnul Suhaimi believes they will become the future business for Indonesia's telecom industry.

"The year 2012 was a year of continuing investment, transition and transformation for XL," said Suhaimi. "To lead the transformation to data, we are focusing on shifting to data, enhancing service quality, intensifying programs to increase customer retention, and strengthening brand positioning." He added that with the strong demand for data in Indonesia, data services offer the best opportunity to become a major revenue generator for XL.