About

Majority-owned by Hutchison Asia Telecommunications, H3I provides telecommunications services in Indonesia offering mobile data, voice, and SMS services, as well as mobile broadband services to millions of customers in the country. Led by their talented and vastly experienced general counsel, Frederic Brion, the legal team at H3I have worked on agreements the business identified as key for the operation of its services. For instance, they helped facilitate an agreement with Nokia in December 2017 for the Finnish multinational’s cloud-native packet core to deliver enhanced mobile broadband and future services. Demonstrating the value of this deal, H3I will be able to reduce capital expenditure, minimise operating costs and speed time-to-market for new services as result of it. Comprised of 12 lawyers in total, the team is split into two divisions. The division for commercial and network related matters is headed by senior counsel Andrea Ernst and primarily deals with commercial contracts and the management of vendors or partners, helping on claims and other operational problems. The other division is headed by legal general manager for corporate affairs and business operations Agnes Yaniar Pawestri and handles general corporate, compliance and policies, special projects such as refinancing and financing, reporting to Indonesian authorities and internal reporting. On the team’s recent achievements, Brion says, ‘2017 was a busy year for H3I’s legal department, in particular with respect to financing and refinancing activities. Without the assistance of any external law firms, we managed to put in place structure and mechanisms for equipment vendor (re)-financings that addressed both tough regulatory requirements or currency matters and practical aspects inherent to this type of transaction’. Describing the challenges they have faced, Brion adds, ‘the telecom sector is literally undergoing a digital revolution that translates for legal departments into the handling of data and privacy matters. H3I’s legal department has been working on this for nearly two and a half years now, starting with a self-education on these matters when the Indonesian laws did not even have a comprehensive framework for this issues. We have had to learn in depth about IT systems, security, customers’ behaviour, marketing initiatives and payment systems relating to fintech initiatives’.