Indonesia’s largest mobile operator Telkomsel said it rolled out 4.5G service in nine cities, including the capital, as part of an ongoing network quality improvement programme called the True Broadband Experience (TrueBEx).

The operator, with a 44 per cent market share, sourced network equipment for the deployment from Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia and ZTE. It is using 20MHz of 1.8GHz spectrum combined with 4×4 MIMO technology in the country’s capital city Jakarta and also Medan, Bandung, Denpasar, Mataram, Pontianak, Makassar, Manado and Ambon.

Sukardi Silalahi, Telkomsel’s director of networks, said in a statement that 4.5G technology “enables data access to double over 4G technology and delivers very low latency, of less than 10ms”. He didn’t specify the peak download rates.

The operator said deployed at least 5,200 4G base stations in 180 cities across the country to date. It had about 12 million 4G subscribers in Q3 and expects to have 15 million by the end of the year, accounting for nearly 9 per cent of its 160 million mobile users, according to GSMA Intelligence.

Telkomsel established 11 experience centres, or GraPARI booths, in the nine cities where customers can test devices using the new 4.5G network.