JAKARTA. PT Smartfren Telecom has extended its Long-Term Evolution (4G LTE) network to 85 cities across the country to accelerate its market penetration.

The company, which is now the sole CDMA operator in the country, is cooperating with Nokia and ZTE, with the former developing base transceiver stations (BTS) in Greater Jakarta, West Java and Sumatra, and the latter handling Smartfren's infrastructure in Central Java, East Java, Bali, Lombok, Kalimantan and Sulawesi.

Last year, Smartfren launched the Andromax 4G LTE handset series to allow consumers to take full advantage of the service. The provider also collaborates with Samsung, Lenovo and Hisense as popular handset brands.

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Of Smartfren’s 13 million customers, 1 million are reportedly users of 4G LTE services. Among the company's latest broadband network products are a 4G LTE Internet card, the Andromax MiFi 4G LTE modem and the True Unlimited Internet 4G LTE service with starting prices of Rp 25,000 (less than US$2), Rp 299,000 and Rp 75,000, respectively. The latter is said to enable users to stream videos on YouTube and Netflix.

The combination of Smartfren's 4G LTE technology of Frequency Division Duplex (FDD), which runs at a frequency of 850 megahertz (MHz), and Time Division Duplex (TDD), which runs at 2300 MHz, is said to allow wider networks and faster internet access.

Major Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) operators PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Selular (Telkomsel), PT XL Axiata and PT Indosat have launched 4G services on the 1,800 MHz frequency band in a number of cities.

The service, which is expected to live up to the ideal 4G speed of 100 megabytes per second (Mbps), will help operators attract more data-heavy consumers to eventually boost the industry’s average revenue per user.

At around $2.4 per 500 megabytes (MB), Indonesia’s mobile broadband price trails prices in Cambodia and India with $2.8 and $3.4, respectively, according to a report from the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).  (Anton Hermansyah)