Govt plan may disrupt cell phone services

The Jakarta administration's plan to replace 2,500 base transceiver station (BTS) towers with 850 newer ones will lead to cellular network chaos, says a member of the Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory Agency.

Heru Sutadi said Tuesday all cellular connections could be lost if operators are forced to move from one BTS tower to another.

"The plan to dismantle existing BTS towers and replace them with the new ones is a breach of an Information and Communications Ministry 2008 regulation on tower sharing," he said Tuesday.

The ministry issued the regulation earlier this year to back a gubernatorial decree introduced in Jakarta in 2001 on tower sharing. Each BTS tower has to be occupied by at least two cellular operators.

"The ministry regulation on tower sharing does not say to destroy existing BTS towers," Heru said.

"It requires old cellular operators to strengthen their towers to share them with new players by 2010 in anticipation of the additional load," he said.

The city spatial planning agency has so far decided on the locations for over 470 blocks of BTS towers.