PT Telekomunikasi Selular (Telkomsel), Indonesia’s state-owned telecommunications company, has launched the country’s first commercial 5G service. The service will be initially available in areas with higher consumer demand for data services such as the residential areas of Jakarta and South Tangerang.
Telkomsel will deploy 5G service in the neighbourhoods of Kelapa Gading and Pantai Indah Kapuk (PIK) in North Jakarta, Pondok Indah and Kawasan Widya Chandra in South Jakarta as well as Bumi Serpong Damai (BSD) and Alam Sutera in South Tangerang. Additionally, the Bandung Institute of Technology (ITB), Telkom University in West Java,Telkomsel Smart Office in Jakarta and branch offices in nine cities will all be equipped with the 5G services.
The expansion of 5G network in the country has been hampered due to the limited availability of base transceiver stations (BTS) that are able to support the transmission of 2.3GHz frequencies. As a result, Telkomsel’s 5G networks will continue to utilise the current 4G infrastructure, a practise known as non-standalone (NSA) 5G.