Syahrial Ali's Blog

Indosat (Indonesian Satellite Corporation), the second biggest cellular operator in Indonesia will launch its new communication satellite, named Indosat Palapa-D, in Xichang, Southwest China, today August 31st, 2009. Indosat Palapa-D will replace Palapa-C which will end its operation time in 2011. Palapa-D has been designed since 2004 and is expected to orbit for 15 years.

Palapa-D is made by Thales Alenia Space France with the platform of Spacebus-4000B3. PALAPA-D has 120% capacity higher than Palapa-C. Beside that, Palapa-D can cover ASEAN countries, several Asia countries, middle east and Australia. This satellite has 4100kg in weight and at the launch time consume 7500 watt power. Indosat uses the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) service to launch the satellite.

Indosat will make use this satellite to broadcasting services, cellular backhaul services, VSAT service, DigiBouquet and Telecast Service as value added services to serve corporate customers in data communication and broadcasting. Indosat also uses this satellite for as backbone for other services such as cellular, fixed phone and fixed data. For your information, Indosat is the company which has almost all telecommunication services such: cellular, both GSM/3G and CDMA, fixed, long distance, international gateway, satellite, and data.

Research in Motion (RIM)-the producer of the popular BlackBerry smartphone was successfully open their Authorized Repair Facility in Indonesia last week. Indonesian Information and Communication Ministry was happy with that and already approved it but RIM still need to complete their administrative document to receive trade certification.

For your information, Indonesia has blocked the certification procedure of RIM exports into the country in June, due to the absence of after-sales service facilities. Indonesian Telecommunication Telecommunication Regulator has made the inspection and quite satisfied with the facilities.

RIM has tried to fulfill the requirement requested according to the letter No.652/2009 15 Juli 2009 who address to all telecommunication service provider and vendor and importers which are related to RIM commitments for BlackBerry service center.

RIM has made cooperation with PT Teleplan Indonesia to provide local support for repairing for BlackBerry users in Indonesia. The scope of cooperation includes providing the center of repairing in Jakarta and at least 6 service center in all over Indonesia.

When the voice call tariff getting lower and lower, mobile operators are trying to find out the way to increase their revenue. Many value added services such as ring back tone, multimedia messaging, and various data services through internet connectivity. Currently, the competition is moving toward providing internet connectivity.

When 3G operators such as Indosat, Telkomsel and XL have provided internet services since a couple of years ago, CDMA operators are currently entering the internet service business with several packets. Star One from Indosat offers Internet Unlimited. By giving IVIO modem, customers only pay IDR 499,000 to have 3 months of unlimited internet access services. Besides that Starone also provide monthly packet from IDR 45,000 (U$4.5) to IDR 125,000 (US$12.5)

Smart Telecom bundle its internet access services with a netbook from IDR 4.6m to IDR 5.9m. If customer want a postpaid service, he/she has to pay an installment of IDR 499rb for 12 months and receive internet service for a year. If customer chooses prepaid payment, he/she has to buy a netbook with the price of IDR 4.6m which embedded with a CDMA modem. This packet only receive one month free internet access. Besides that, Smart Telecom also sells modem with the price from IDR 200,000 (US$20) to IDR 2m (USD$ 200) also with one month internet free access.

Meanwhile, Mobile-8 with product call Fren provide internet access service from IDR 88,000 to IDR 250,000 a month. Monile-8 promises a speed up to 3.1Mbps.

Telkom Flexi and Bakrie are the CDMA operators which are not too serious with internet access services. Flexi just provide time based access with the tariff of IDR 3 / kilobit for volume based and IDR 200 per minute for time based. Meanwhile Bakrie still with their Wimode which is not popular as the speed is very low.

Indonesian Ministry of Information and Communication has planned to digitalize the broadcasting system in Indonesia. To implement this idea several tools have been prepare such as regulation, transition technology solution and industry to support the change.

Several local industries have been developed set top box to receive digital broadcasting signal and converted it to analog signal to analog television. Some of them have made several times trial with good result.

The free to air trial has been performed by PT Konsorsium Televisi Digital Indonesia and Konsorsium LPP TVRI – PT Telkom as the continuity of soft launching declared by the vice president Jusuf Kalla on August 13th, 2008. Meanwhile on August 3rd 2009, Minister of Information and Communication Mr. Mohammad Nuh has proclaimed the trial for digital mobile TV which is performed by Konsorsium Tren Mobile TV and Konsorsium Telkom – Telkomsel – Indonusa.

The goal of trial for mobile tv is to know the receiving quality of mobile tv both on technical and non technical aspects. This is done in order to make an appropriate business regulation. The regulation is expected to finish in March 2010.

Happy watching the digital television.