Telstra expands into Indonesia

Telstra has inked a deal with Indonesia’s biggest telco for the provision of network applications and services to South East Asia, just one month after selling its stake in Hong-Kong based mobile carrier CSL.

David Thodey.

Telstra announced today it had signed a non-binding memorandum of understanding with Telkom Indonesia for a new joint venture to tap into the growing Indonesian economy.

It will offer Indonesia’s business customers cloud computing and unified communications services as well as managed network and security solutions. 

Telstra has spent the last year bolstering its NAS division with acquisitions including network integrator O2 Networks last week and unified comms provider NSC last August.

Telstra CEO David Thodey said during the telco’s 2012-13 results briefing that the company had made a “very conscious decision” to propel the NAS division into a standalone, profitable business in its own right.

"So as you see us building our capability in call centres, unified comms, security services, the whole area around video conferencing, those businesses all need to be standalone profitable as well, as well as wrapping around that core network,” he said at the time.

Telstra's NAS portfolio grew 17.7 percent to $1.5 billion over the last last financial year.

Telstra sold out of its 76 percent stake in Hong Kong-based mobile carrier CSL for US$2.4 billion in late December. Thodey said at the time that Telstra needed to maximise shareholder value by carefully considering the individual characteristics of Asia’s “diverse” regions.