Indonesian telco Indosat has officially launched its new brand name Indosat Ooredoo and set out its stall to focus more on the digital services segment, providing a range of more accessible and affordable services. The operator has also unveiled a new logo that foregrounds the input of majority shareholder Qatar-based Ooredoo (65%), and pledged to become a leading player in digital communications in Indonesia, at the same time confirming the launch of faster, 112Mbps peak speeds on its 4G LTE network. Indosat President and CEO Alexander Rusli said in statement: ‘Indosat Ooredoo aims to be number one in digital income, number one in digital experience and the number one digital brand for customers,’ and will launch lower-priced services in order to help achieve this. ‘The digital world must be user friendly, simple and easily accessed. We will help all Indonesians to increase their quality of life through digital services and technology,’ Alexander said.
As previously reported by CommsUpdate, Indosat reported net income of IDR19.58 trillion (USD1.44 billion) for the three months ending 30 September 2015, up 10.5% year-on-year from IDR17.72 trillion, fuelled by the company’s success in attracting new users on the back of its network upgrade and expansion work. The country’s second-biggest operator by subscribers reported that operating profit for the period under review spiked by 284.3% to IDR1.89 trillion in Q3 2015, and earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) rose 12.8% to IDR8.60 trillion; EBITDA margin was 43.8%. Further, Indosat noted a 2.7% increase in operating expenses, which it attributed to a higher ‘telecommunication service burden, depreciation and amortisation, wages, marketing expenses and administrative and general expenses’.
Indosat closed out 30 September with a total of 69.0 million mobile subscribers, up 27.3% from 54.2 million at the same time a year earlier, with cellular services contributing 82% of the operator’s consolidated income. Indosat’s debt level at end-September had edged up 5.1% y-o-y after it took new loans to accelerate its plan to pay off US dollar denominated bonds.