Syahrial Ali’s Blog

After the regulator of Indonesia Telecommunication reducing the interconnection tariff on April 1st, 2008, the voice telecommunication tariff is getting lower and lower. Operators were competing in tariff war. Right now we will find that many operators will charge their customers not only time based or number of call based, but on daily basis. It means that the customers will be charged some amount of money (from Rp 1,000- 2,000 (around US$ 10 cents - 20 cents), unrelated with the number of calls or the duration of the calls you have made during that day. Very cheap indeed.

As the result of this campaign, the operators’ income from voice will decrease. So, there should be an alternate source of income to fill the gap. Some of them are: SMS, MMS, value added services and internet services.

According to Portio Research, cellular data services was estimated contributed 20% income of the cellular operator all over the world in the year 2007. The proportion of the data service as the SMS and the highest Internet happened in the Asia-Pacific region that reached 24.5%.

How about Indonesia? The competition in data service, especially internet is also high. Outside of cellular operators (both 3G and EVDO), people has lot of choices such as Telkom Speedy (ADSL from Telkom), Fastmedia and internet from paytv providers. Moreover, in the near future, there will be WiMAX or other broadband wireless access technology in Indonesia as the license will be released by the end of 2008.

Here are some best promotion from data service provider:

Telkom Speedy: free usage from 8pm - 8am every day. Axis: free 100 MB when you register as new users. IM2 Indosat: unlimited for just Rp 100,000 a month.

So, who will lead the market in data service in Indonesia? Time will tell.