03 October 2007

NTS Job Fair

Last week, I attended the NTS walk-in interview. NTS, a local company owned by Maxis (Malaysia telco operator since 1995) and STC (Saudi Telco Company, “Telkom”-nya saudi). Formerly named Lippo Telecom and owned by the James Riyadi groups, operates in Surabaya and use the GSM technology along with Primasel that also operates in Surabaya, but using CDMA Technology.

Previously, NTS suffered many financial problem with dual ownership by Maxis and Lippo, but since the STC take over, suddenly NTS become the gold mine for some telco people, including vendor and professional. One of the biggest concerns, this is the first time STC entered the global market. STC is not known as operator that had many success stories in their expansion program such as Etisalat from Emirates or Batelco from Bahrain.

Indonesia as a big market now seeing as a big pool with many fish for some world operator, simply as Vodafone through Telecom Malaysia (TM), Altimo that eager to enter Indonesia along with President Putin arrival couple of months before, and the also the previous player, the famous Temasek and SingTel.

So, in couple of years, to be precise, 3 – 5 years from now, we will see Indonesia as the biggest market for Telecommunication Company, just like how we see Indonesia now on the Oil and Gas sector. We will see more world class services and world class handset. But, hopefully we will not make the same mistakes in the oil and gas sector, the mistakes for not letting the local professional and vendor to enter this big market and paying a lot of money to the foreign company and foreign professional and also the foreign vendor.

The final word will be, Lets fight in this 3 years to make Indonesia as the modern country through Telecommunication, like India known on its IT sector and China for its Manufacture sector.