•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   

PT Bakrie Telecom on Thursday launched its wireless broadband service, which comes bundled with the Google Chrome browser as a standard feature.

Eric Meijer, deputy president director of Bakrie Telecom unit PT Bakrie Connectivity, said the new service, launched under the brand name Aha, will initially be offered in Surabaya, Yogyakarta, Semarang, Solo, Malang and Bogor — with plans to increase coverage to 10 more cities by the end of the year.

“We won’t launch in Jakarta yet because we want to target places which are still undeserved for wireless broadband,” he said.

Google is collaborating with Bakrie Connectivity to take advantage of Indonesia’s explosive growth in Internet use.

“Users are growing very, very fast. Indonesia is about to explode,” said Emmanuel Sauquet, business development director of Google Asia.

“It has very diverse and very active online communities. It’s the right place for us to come.”

Google, which announced on Tuesday that it was adding more Indonesian content for its Chrome browser, said it also would be talking to other operators about bundling its software.

Aha will feature broadband wireless access using CDMA EVDO Rev.A technology that will have a download speed of up to 3.1 megabytes per second for subscription packages priced from Rp 80,000 to Rp 200,000 ($8.80 to $22) a month.

It will also feature a USB modem costing Rp 499,000.

To support Bakrie Connectivity, Bakrie Telecom has set aside $100 million this year to expand infrastructure.

Muhammad Jumadi, secretary general of the Indonesia Telecommunications Users Group, warned that cheap Internet subscriptions had both positive and negative impact for users. Cheaper rates could lead to a price war and make other operators also slash their rates and probably sacrifice service quality to achieve it, he said.

“Bakrie Telecom and other operators should prove to their customers that cheap tariffs don’t mean customers end up with poor Internet quality,” Jumadi said.

Wireless broadband required considerable infrastructure to support it, especially with the fast-growing number of subscribers, he said.

However, Jumadi said that companies offering lower subscription tariffs could also be positive for customers.

“If other companies are also reducing their tariffs then customers eventually will get cheaper tariffs for broadband so it will be more affordable. It will be positive as long as its cheap but the quality is maintained,” he said.

Indonesia’s population of more than 230 million people and low market penetration have made it attractive to Internet companies.

A study by Yahoo found that Indonesia was the largest and fastest growing online market in Southeast Asia. It forecast Internet use would grow by 48 percent in 2010, compared to 22 percent last year. The country has about 40 million Internet users and around 22 million people with Facebook accounts, making it the third-largest market for the social network behind the United States and Britain.