Winning 2.3GHz Frequency Auction, Telkomsel And Smartfen Will Present 5G Services

JAKARTA - The Ministry of Communication and Information Technology (Kemenkominfo) has announced the auction results for the 2.3GHz frequency. Telkomsel and Smartfren managed to become winners in the selection of frequencies that can be used for 5G networks.

Quoting the official statement from Kominfo, Telkomsel received two frequency band blocks with the proposed bid price of Rp. 176.9 billion per block. Meanwhile, Smartfren will manage one block of frequency bands with a scale of 10 MHz, after submitting a bid of Rp176.5 billion.

"In the process, Telkomsel chose Block A and Block C from the 2.3 GHz band. Meanwhile, Smartfren chose Block B," wrote the document.

In accordance with the provisions in the 2.3GHz Radio Frequency Band User Selection Document for the Purposes of Organizing Cellular Mobile Networks in 2021, the selection stage is continued with a Selection Object Block Selection Meeting which has been held today April 22, 2021.

The selection of users of the 2.3 GHz radio frequency band aims to increase the capacity of cellular mobile networks, improve service quality to the maximum, and accelerate the deployment of ICT infrastructure with fifth-generation (5G) technology.

Actually, this selection was done some time ago. At that time, it was mentioned that there were three winners, namely Telkomsel, Hutchison 3 Indonesia and Smartfren. At that time, the auction bids for the three companies were IDR114,867 billion each.

However, the auction process had to be stopped by Kominfo on the grounds that it was to harmonize laws and regulations regarding PNBP in Kominfo. One of them is PP No. 80 of 2015.