Mobile broadband penetration in Indonesia has risen over the past five years. However, the market is still at a relatively early stage of development.

According to the research from ResearchAndMarkets.com, Indonesia will witness strong growth for mobile broadband over the next five years to 2023.

Indonesia still faces challenges in building the telecommunications infrastructure required to support a large population spread over its complex geography.

Fixed broadband penetration in Indonesia remains relatively low mainly due to a limited number of fixed lines and the dominance of the mobile platform.

However, the fixed broadband market has grown strongly over the past five years from a very small base. In addition, a number of FTTH launches have recently occurred as Indonesia finally sees some momentum in the rollout of FTTH services.

Over the next five years to 2023 strong growth is expected to continue in the fixed broadband market driven by the FTTH market.

A large number of mobile operators compete for revenues in the Indonesian market. All the major mobile operators are well advanced in the deployment of their 4G LTE networks, as the market moves towards 5G.

Telkomsel and Huawei held a live demo of 5G technology in Jakarta, while Telkomsel also confirmed plans to test 5G technology at the Asian Games.

The Indonesian data centre market has experienced significant growth over the past two decades. In particular, growth has been very strong over the past few years, as Indonesia seeks to bridge the gap with its more advanced neighbors such as Singapore and Malaysia, the research said.

Indonesia is attracting investments from hyperscale cloud providers such as Google, Alibaba, and Amazon, reflecting a growing interest in Indonesia as an alternative to Singapore, for cloud and data centre services.

The construction of a broadband network in the eastern part of the country under the Palapa Ring Project II has been completed. The project was the second part of a project designed to link Indonesian cities through an integrated fibre optic network.

Industry consolidation is possible towards 2020 as intense data competition may force smaller and unprofitable mobile operators to be pushed out of the market.

Mobile subscriber growth is expected to be relatively low over the next five years to 2023 as the market further matures in a highly competitive market. The market will be driven by the uptake of both 4G and 5G services, the research said.

In one of the major developments around 5G, Smartfren selected ZTE of China to collaborate on the development of 5G technology in the country.