Who offers the best 4G LTE connection in Indonesia? Here’s our side-by-side comparison

What a month so far in Indonesia so far! In December, all three of the biggest telcos launched their 4G LTE networks commercially in the country. However, these services are not rolled out nationwide and offer different speeds.

This time, Tech in Asia will provide side-by-side comparisons of the 4G LTE connections offered by three telcos: Telkomsel, XL Axiata, and Indosat, as well as from internet service provider Bolt.


Getting connected
In order to be able to use the 4G connections in Indonesia, you must use 4G-ready smartphones. To connect to 4G network from operators, users in Indonesia must first exchange the SIM cards in respective service centers, and then subscribe to specific data plans. For Bolt, you can either connect to its 4G modem via a 4G smartphone, or directly use Bolt SIM cards which are only compatible with Bolt’s own smartphones.

Speed and area coverage
Speed-wise, XL Axiata is number one, promising internet speed up to 100Mbps. Second place goes to Bolt with speed of up to 72Mbps. Telkomsel and Indosat tie in third place with speed of “just” up to 36Mbps. That’s still a nice boost to operators’ maximum speed last year on 3G, which was up to 14.4Mbps.

Note that internet connection speeds in Indonesia are quite low in general due to the lack of infrastructure, so even if the numbers above look decent, in reality you can still get a very slow connection. The mentioned speeds are advertised “up to”, which means they can and probably will run slower.

For coverage, Bolt takes the lead by covering 750,000 users in Jakarta, Bogor, Depok, Tangerang, and Bekasi areas. Telkomsel, the country’s biggest operator, covers a few areas in Jakarta and Bali. While XL Axiata mostly provides 4G speed in Bogor, Medan, and Yogyakarta. XL is still holding 4G trials in Jakarta, mostly covering only Kelapa Gading area in North Jakarta. Indosat’s coverage is quite small: a few areas surrounding Jakarta’s Monas, Thamrin, and Sudirman districts.

Undoubtedly, the operators will all widen their coverage to more cities in Indonesia next year.


Price
It’s quite tough to compare the 4G price between operators and Bolt, since each offering has its own quota bonuses and usage duration. But for comparison’s sake, these are the prices in Jakarta for a 30-day period (note that the pricing for data packages below may change in the next few months):

Provider Data Quota Price
Telkomsel (Simpati) 1GB, extra 1GB in 3G Rp 75,000 (US$6)
XL Axiata 4GB in 4G, extra 4GB in 2G and 3G Rp 99,000 (US$8)
Indosat 13GB Rp 99,000 (US$8)
Bolt 6GB (30 days) and 8GB (14 days) Rp 100,000 (US$8)

So there you go, Bolt is no longer the only player offering a 4G mobile connection in Indonesia. The three big telcos are now competing against each other to provide faster internet speeds to netizens, and unfortunately, users may not get more affordable data rates as time goes on. Indosat CEO Alexander Rusli called for all operators to increase their data plan prices, while rivals Telkomsel and XL Axiata are putting in intrusive ads inside users’ phone screens to squeeze higher returns out of their subscribers.