TEMPO Interactive, Jakarta: Four nations and a foreign telecommunication company have offered an satellite orbit slot to PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Tbk (Telkom). The four nations are Russia, China, Japan and Malaysia.Sarwoto Atmosutarno, Telkom's Head of Infrastructure Division, said that Telkom will determine the slots to be leased after analyzing the engineering plan or satellite technology use plan in August, 2007. For certain, this year all will be completed. Or else, the launching will be delayed again, said Sarwoto in Jakarta.He explained that the aim of Telkom's leasing the satellite orbit slot was for the relocation of the Telkom-1 satellite which originally was to use the slot of 150.5 East Longitude degrees. However, because the slot's status did not yet gain International Telecommunication Union's (ITU) notification, Telkom carry on its intention and will still use the satellite orbit slot.. This is because if Telkom must await until the ITU issues the orbit slot notification, the launching of Telkom's satellite will be delayed for a long time. Yet Telkom needs a new satellite very much bearing in mind Telkom's current satellite capacity is already full, said Sarwoto.As already reported, Telkom's Managing Director Rinaldi Firmansyah said Telkom delayed the launching of Telkom-3 satellite because it was still searching for a new orbit slot in order to relocate the Telkom-1 satellite. It is planned that Telkom will launch a new satellite in 2009.The procurement of Telkom-3 satellite was not included in the capital expenditure of this year. The satellite business can contribute five to six percent profit of the company's total income.Telkom has presented a request for information of leasing a satellite orbit slot to four nations.Now Telkom has two satellites, Telkom-1, which was launched on August 13, 1999, with a capacity of 24 transponders, and was placed in the 118 East Longitude degrees slot. The second satellite Telkom owns is Telkom-2, at 108 East Longitude degrees, made by Orbital and launched by Arianespace on November 17, 2005.Eko Nopiansyah
