Smartfren Telecom, one of the smallest mobile players in Indonesia, will take over the operations of Bolt which was forced to suspend LTE internet service after the government terminated its spectrum licence for failing to pay fees for more than two years, The Jakarta Post reported.

Djoko Tata Ibrahim, Smartfren deputy CEO, said in a statement: “We have made this agreement as part of our support for Bolt customers. Its customers are now able to replace their 4G cards to our Smartfren Now+ prepaid SIM cards for free.”

Smartfren had less than 4 per cent share of the country’s 356 million mobile connections at end-December, GSMA Intelligence data showed.

Indonesia’s Communications and Information Ministry (known locally as Kominfo) last week cancelled the 2.3GHz licences of Bolt Internux and its parent company First Media, which owe the government more than IDR709 billion ($49 million) in spectrum charges. The two companies won 2.3GHz spectrum in an auction in 2009.

Both companies offered mobile internet service under the Bolt brand, which had about 3 million 4G connections at end-December. Its user base peaked at 3.2 million in Q1 2018.