Boston, MA - May 23, 2012 – Indonesia, the world’s fourth largest nation, may be on the brink of a revolution in wireless Internet access, according to the Strategy Analytics Emerging Markets Communications Strategies (EMCS) service. The report, “EMCS Country Profile: Indonesia,” argues that the limited penetration of fixed internet services presents a major opportunity for mobile operators to fill the gap with wireless offerings.

With rising incomes and a young, well-educated population – adult literacy stands at 92% - the demand for Internet access is high, but the wireline infrastructure is not in place to handle it, and is not likely to be. “Getting fiber or DSL to everybody in a place like Connecticut is hard enough, but to wire up a relatively poor nation spread over 17,000 volcanic islands – it just is not going to happen,” says Tom Elliott, Director of EMCS and the report’s primary author.

Indonesia’s nine mobile operators have been developing and promoting wireless broadband services with pre-paid pricing plans that are affordable to even low-income consumers. Telkomsel, the market leader, already has about 4 percent of its subscribers signed up for mobile broadband service, a number that has been roughly doubling the past several years. XL Axiata, the number three operator, now gets 15 percent of total revenues from advanced data services.

“With nine operators, Indonesia is a very competitive market, which has helped to hold down mobile data pricing,” notes Rahul Gupta, senior manager for Strategy Analytics EMCS in India. “The Indonesian model, in which mobile data services are a volume game rather than a high end niche product, is potentially a good one for other emerging market operators to follow.”