PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom), the Southeast Asian country’s largest telecoms firm, is reportedly seeking to buyout SingTel’s stake in their jointly-owned mobile business, Telkomsel. The mobile unit is Indonesia’s largest mobile operator (and the eighth-largest in the world) with over 100 million subscribers. Telkom owns 65 percent and SingTel owns 35 percent. “We are in the process of selecting a financial advisor that will advise us the best way to buy back the Telkomsel stake,” Telkom CEO Rinaldi Firmansyah (pictured) told reporters today, reports Dow Jones Newswires. He said that Telkom will hold a series of talks with SingTel for the stake buyback. The Indonesian government, which owns a 51.19 percent stake in Telkom, has said that it expects Telkom to complete the buyback study later this year.

According to earlier local press reports, Telkom’s plan to take full control of its mobile arm is linked to SingTel’s rumoured reluctance to sell Telkomsel’s cell towers to Telkom. Telkomsel controls around 20,000 towers in Indonesia (about 40 percent of the country’s total), and Telkom is thought to be interested in spinning-off the towers business into a separate entity and eventually listing it. Telkomsel is one of SingTel’s most valuable “regional associates” (firms in which it owns a minority stake), contributing SGD190 million (US$154 million) in pre-tax ordinary profit at the Singapore-based operator last quarter.