Tariff Anomaly Between Prepaid and Pospaid
According to the data from DG Postel (released on Oct 9th, 2008), the total number of Indonesian telecommunication subscribers were more than 134 millions subscribers which consist of 8.7 millions fixed, 12.7 millions FWA and 113 millions of cellular subscribers. Like other developing countries, the prepaid and postpaid compositions of FWA and cellular subscribers are 96% (more than 121m) are prepaid subscribers with only less than 4 % are post paid. This was different very much with developed countries where this composition was overturn, namely the number of customers postpaid far exceeded the number of customers prepaid. Their classic reason is they do not want to pay everything that was not yet utilised.
By the way, have you ever compared the tariff scheme for both types of payment (prepaid and postpaid) in Indonesian cellular telecommunication? Let’s take Telkomsel as an example. If we look at the basic price then the postpaid tariff is lower than other prepaid tariff (Halo Rp 600/min, Simpati Rp 1500/min & Kartu As Rp 900/min) for on-net local, off-net (Halo Rp750/min, Simpati Rp 1600/min; Kartu As Rp 900/min). Only SMS is higher than prepaid (Halo Rp 150, Simpati Rp 125, Kartu As Rp 88). However, if we investigate the promo tariff, then the prepaid tariff is far lower than the postpaid tariff. The tariff for prepaid is only Rp 0.5/second or Rp 30/min, far below the tariff for postpaid Rp 600/min).
The similar thing will be found with other cellular operator such as Indosat and XL. XL for instance just ask prepaid subscribers to pay Rp 1,000 for 60 minutes, while postpaid subscriber has to pay Rp 9/second. Indosat place a Rp 15/second to all operators for postpaid subscribers and Rp 1,000/day for prepaid subscriber .
I think, this tariff scheme is an anomaly if we calculate the cost of prepaid system.
Prepaid call need more resources. For instance, before connected, the system shall perform a balance checking, whether it still has credit to make a call. This check perform continuously during the conversation. After the call release, the system shall report the charge of the call to subtract the credit. So, it need a realtime system. This requirement is different with post paid system. All checkings can be postpone to the end of the month when you need to send the billing.
In the security view, the postpaid users have a clear identities because of initial checking on registration. Meanwhile the prepaid user who register online can input invalid data.
So, why the operators do not offer good incentives for postpaid subscribers? Shall we jump to conclusion that operators are more beneficial by getting money earlier before their network is used? And the amount is bigger than the cost of prepaid systems?
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