XL Axiata has become Indonesia's first mobile operator to commercially launch LTE services in capital city Jakarta, and has revealed a target of having the network cover 35 cities by the end of the year.
The operator has also launched 150Mbps LTE services in Yogyakarta, Medan, Lombok, Bali, Surabaya and Bandung, and plans to roll out to 11 other cities by the end of the month, the Jakarta Postreported.
In Jakarta specifically, XL aims to have 1,500 LTE base stations in operation by the end of the year - up from 1,100 today - and have over 3 million LTE users in the city by this time.
XL vice president for LTE Pantro Pander Silitonga told the Jakarta Post that the company expects it to take just three years to migrate its 3G customer base on to 4G, compared to 10 years for the transition from 2G to 3G.
The rollout has been enabled by Indonesia's efforts to refarm the nation's 1800-MHz spectrum for LTE services, a process XL has now completed.
XL and its main rivals Telkomsel, Indosat, 3 Indonesia and Smartfren all launched 4G trials over the 1800-MHz band in July as part of this refarming process.