Syahrial Ali’s Blog

A shocking news released by Qualcomm last November when the company decided to stop the UMB (Ultra Mobile Broadband) development. The company will now focus on developing Long Term Evolution (LTE) based platforms - which has been backed by the majority of WCDMA based mobile operators as their network upgrade path.

Previously Qualcomm is one of the competing participant in 4G technology development by using its own product, UMB. When they stop the UMB, the race down to LTE and WiMAX. In this race, WiMAX is ahead in the market as several countries have launched their WiMAX systems while LTE is still under trial. LTE will be in commercial in 2009.

As a supporter, Qualcomm is really serious with LTE. They have planned to start sampling multi-mode chips including LTE in the second quarter of 2009. Then, the competition for 4G service is getting high.

Malaysia is a neighbor country of Indonesia. It has 2 separate lands, mainland and north Malaysia in Kalimantan. In several telecommunication regulations, Malaysia is ahead of Indonesia. Let’s see the 3 advanced cases below: 3G, WiMAX and Number Portability.

3G:

Malaysia released 3G licenses since July 2002, far before Indonesia who release the licensed on early 2006. Malaysia allocated 3 blocks, but at the tender the winners were only 2 companies namely: Telekom Malaysia  dan UMTS Sdn Bhd.  Both companies were already operated. On November 2006, the 3rd and 4th licenses were released to TIME dotcom Sdn Bhd and MiTV. (more…)

As written in previous posting about BWA tender in Indonesia, the Indonesian Telecommunication Regulator in its white paper draft about BWA plan to release the BWA license before the end of the year. However most probably this plan will be postponed. This could be seen from the first process stage namely taking of the tender document that shall be done in the 4th week of November and up until now it is not announced yet.

Suppose the document will be issued this week and the process run smoothly, then the earliest tender will be started at the beginning of this coming January 2009. But as is already known, the end year is busy periods that are accompanied with the several holidays, and this time are Idhul Adha, Christmas and New Year. As a result the effective length of service far decreased. Considering all of these, the earliest BWA tender will be realised this coming February 2009. If this happened then it is precisely three years after the tender 3G that was carried out at the beginning of 2006.

The regulator of the Indonesian Telecommunications applies the elegant way to release the license with many interested parties, namely tender. We support every effort that put the transparancy and fairness. Congratulation to Indonesian Telecommunication Regulator!.

What’s your comment about current telecommunication tariff in Indonesia? Please pay attention for the 3 biggest operators’ ads nowadays. XL claim that customers can talk for 17 hours for only Rp 1,000 (almost US$1), while Indosat informs that customers can make a voice communication with just Rp 1,000 for whole day. The biggest cellular operator, Telkomsel asks for Rp 2,000 for entire day communication.

What are thay looking for exactly? If we inspect the terms and condition, it is mentioned that the tariff is for On-net communication only, for the same network. If you are an Indosat subscribers, the tariff applies for calling to Indosat network. The same is true for XL and Telkomsel.

Yes, the operator can only play with on-net tariff. They don’t touch the off-net tariff. Why? Because the off-net tariff comprise of two parties originating and terminating network and the tariff is already agreed between them.

According to the information from each operator last year, the average revenue per user is around Rp 50,000 - Rp 60,000. By applying the daily tariff as mention above, each operator target of ARPU is still the same. 30 days mean Rp 30,000 and plus the cost of interoperator call then the average ARPU will be around Rp 50,000. So, it means that there are many ways to maintain the revenue by bundling it with variety of tariffing scheme.

According to the schedule released by Indonesian Directorate General of Post Telecommunication, the license of broadband wireless access (BWA) will be released by the end of this year. Participants can bring any kind of technology WiMAX, WiBRO or other kind of broadband technology which can run on the specified spectrum frequency. Among them, WiMAX will be the favorable choice.

WiMAX is a broadband wireless technology that is largely supported by the computer and the telecom industry, cost-effective and standard base. It is engineered to deliver the latest type of ubiquitous fixed and mobile services such as VoIP, Information Technology and Video at very low cost. WiMAX systems are able to cover a large geographical area, up to 50 km and to deliver significant bandwidth to end-users up to 72 Mbps (taken from WiMAX forum). (more…)

According to the latest data from DG Postel, the number of mobile prepaid subscribers in Indonesia have reached 117m on last July. If we calculate mobile phone density, then Indonesia with 240m populations has almost 50%  mobile phone density, a quite higher in number. However, the Sharing Vision surveys say that more and more people tend to have more than one mobile phone.

Actually there are at least 2 main reasons why people tend to have more than one mobile phone. The first reason is the tariff. Both GSM and CDMA have quite different tariffing scheme. People still feel that the GSM tariff is more expensive than CDMA tariff. Hence, everyone will have at least 1 GSM mobile and 1 CDMA mobile . GSM phone is used to receive a call and to maintain contact with other people. For your information, GSM technology is implemented earlier than CDMA in Indonesia, so that more people have GSM mobiles than CDMA mobiles. Meanwhile, CDMA is used to make a call because the tariff is so cheap. (more…)