Yesterday’s big story that Ooredoo and CK Hutchison have agreed to merge their Indonesian units is not the only hot telecoms news from Indonesia in recent days. A 5G network launch and a potentially major data centre initiative have also made headlines.
Nokia and operator Indosat Ooredoo have announced the launch of commercial 5G services in Surabaya city, the capital of the Indonesian province of East Java and the second-largest city in the country. The partners say that under the deal Indosat Ooredoo’s customers will experience new enterprise and industrial use cases underpinned by the new 5G network.
Nokia will supply equipment from its latest ReefShark-based AirScale product range, including its AirScale Single RAN portfolio for both indoor and outdoor coverage.
These solutions, says Nokia, will offer faster speeds and wider mobile coverage for Indosat Ooredoo’s customers while cutting costs for the operator to run its network. Nokia will also deploy its dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) solution, which will allow Indosat Ooredoo to use its 4G networks spectrum for 5G services.
Nokia and Indosat Ooredoo, as well as partners Sepuluh Nopember Institute of Technology (ITS) and the University of Oulu, also plan to open a Nokia 5G Experience Centre at ITS’ facilities in Surabaya. The site includes a Centre of Creativity designed for technology developers and ITS students to explore and develop new 5G use cases, and a Centre of Knowledge with 5G millimetre-wave capability to simulate a live 5G environment for testing a range of 5G use cases.
It also includes a Centre of Excellence offering professional 5G certifications and other academic programmes to support the development of local digital talent.
Meanwhile there’s been unconfirmed, but potentially significant data centre news also relating to Indonesia. The Indonesian conglomerate Salim Group, which has interests across multiple industries, is reportedly trying to arrange financing for building and operating data centres at its industrial parks.
Bloomberg reports that the group is in talks with banks to seek about $500 million worth of loans to fund the digital infrastructure. The plan could see Salim Group invest about $100 million per industrial park, according to the news service’s sources.
