Indonesia To Install 10,000+ Smart Card Payphones
Ray Van Eng (06/15/96)
First, some geography. Indonesia is a collective name for a group of island
somewhere in the Southeast Asia just above Australia.
To quote a more familiar name for all you Internauts out there, Java is not only an important new programming language or a special flavor of coffee for that matter, it is also the main island of Indonesia. Another surprising thing is that this largely unknown country actually has about 190 million people living in a string of islands some 5000 km wide.
Anyway, back to technology. Indonesia has just placed an order with GPT Ltd. of Great Britain for 10,000 of their Sapphire payphones that rely on smart cards as a cashless transaction system. The purchase which is worth UK£14 million will be a major piece of Indonesia's effort to modernize its telecommunication infrastructure and to make telephones much more accessible to its citizens.
The first 100 Sapphire payphones will be put in place in late June and a gradual roll out of 1000 months per month will begin shortly afterwards. Some of the payphones will be placed in virgin territories where there were no telephone services at all previously.
GPT is the leading supplier of smart card payphones in the Asia Pacific region with a significant market presence in many countries in that area including China, Hong Kong, Macau and Thailand.