Syahrial Ali's Blog

Anticipating the disturbing pulse theft, BRTI (Indonesia Telecommunication Regulatory Board) issued a circular to all telecommunications operators in Indonesia. BRTI instructed to stop offering content via SMS broadcast / pop screen / voice broadcast to the unspecified time limit.
In a letter signed by the Director General of Post and Information Organizers as BRTI chairman, Syukri Batubara, BRTI declares this instruction as a follow-up recommendations of the Commission hearing with a House of Representatives, Minister of Communication, BRTI and telecommunications service providers on 10 October and the results of meetings with stakeholders of telecommunications industry on October 11.
It states that in order to improve service quality Premium Messaging Services and to tackle the problem, BRTI instruct the operator of Mobile Cellular Telecommunications Networks and Local Fixed Network with Limited Mobility to:
1. Stop bidding broadcast content via SMS / pop screen / voice broadcast until the deadline to be determined later.
2. Deactivate / unregistrate  at the latest on Tuesday, October 18, 2011 at 00.00 pm for all Premium Messaging Services (including but not limited to SMS / MMS Premium subscription, ringtones, games or wallpapers) except for public services and facilities as well as the financial services capital markets in accordance with the provisions of the legislation, by providing notification of deactivation and information on how to re-register for interested users at no extra charge.
3. Provides summary of users pulses who are cut off due Premium Messaging Services that are enabled via SMS broadcasting / pop screen
4. Returns the users pulses who’ve cut their pulses and harmed by Premium Messaging Services
5. Implementation of items 1 through 4 above shall be reported in writing and periodically to the BRTI starts on Wednesday, October 19, 2011 and every Wednesday of each week until December 31, 2011.
The letter sent to 10 telecom operators in the country. Namely Bakrie Telecom, Hutchison CP Telecommunications, Indosat, Mobile 8, Natrindo Cell Phones, Sampoerna Telekomunikasi Indonesia, Smart Telecom, Telkom, Telkomsel and XL Axiata. (from detik.com)

Telkomsel the biggest Indonesian Cellular Operator announced the number of its customers exceeded 100 million. With this achievement, Telkomsel become the 7 largest cellular operator in the world that are trusted by 100 million subscribers in one country.

“This amount is the number of qualified customers. Telkomsel has strict standards for its customers,” said Sarwoto Atmosutarno, President Director of Telkomsel, while delivering a speech in the “Inauguration of 100 Million Customers” in Ballroom 3 Ritz Carlton Hotel, SBCD, Jakarta , On Tuesday (04/26/2011).

Telkomsel categorizes the SIM card users as high quality when they actively use the cellular card. “If during the three months not making a call or be called for example, automatically removed from the list of customers,” added Sarwoto.

With the achievement of targets 100 million subscribers, Telkomsel has a strong foundation to be beyond telecommunication service based on the data.

In these transformation efforts, in 2011 Telkomsel will invest in capital expenditure worth $ 1.1 Billion U.S. Dollars (about Rp 10.9 trillion) of which 60 percent was allocated to increase broadband services.

Till the end of 2010, PT XL Axiata Tbk claimed 40m subscribers or an increase of 27,7% compare to the period of 2009 which was only 31,4m.

XL’s CEO Hasnul Suhaimi said that the increment mostly happened in last quarter.
“In the last 3 months of 2010, we noted the increment of subscribers was very high, especially in Central Jawa Tengah and Yogyakarta,” he added.
According to Hasnul, the subscriber increment in this year will not as high as 2010, this is beacuse of market saturation, namely 90% of Indonesian population has have mobile number.
XL just targets the increment of 11%-12%. This means at the end of 2011 the XL subscribers will reach 44.5-44.9m.  We always want to grow more than industry namely above 10% each year.

Hasnul also added that the company strategy will not play on tariff of voice and SMS anymore, as now the figure is keeping lower since last year.

“If we play on tariff for these two services, it will impact the quality. Besides that, the SIM card business was not as big as last year, it will be worthless to reduce the tariff as new customer will be small.”
XL will focus on data services which continues to grow its contribution. It is estimated that in 2010 contributed to the data service by 9% -10% of total company revenue. In 2011 it is expected to increase in the range of 15% to 20%.
“Overall revenue grows for 2010 was above 20%.”

According Bisnis Daily, up to third quarter 2010 XL noted a significant increase in performance. In terms of revenue, the company managed to score at Rp13 trillion rupiah, or up 32%
compared to the same period last year.
Meanwhile, net income rose 73% when compared to the same period in 2009 of Rp2.1 trillion . Until that time, XL has 38.5 million subscribers.

XL prepare a capital expenditure of U.S. $ 500 million that will be used to build the 1500-2000 base stations, increased network capacity, and build an optical fiber.
“The amount of capital expenditure was moderate. It could be revised in some times if needed more money. We use internal funds to meet capital expenditure, “said Hasnul. (Bisnis daily)

As informed by DG Postel, all cellular and FWA operators in Indonesia have passed the standard Quality of Service for the year of 2009. The measurement has been performed from July to August last year  in the six cities, namely: Jakarta, Bandung, Surabaya, Makasar, Medan and Batam.

As written in the previous post Indonesian Cellular QoS Rule, the measurement items are:   Call Center Service Level, Endpoint Service Availability which include call success rate, drop call and block call, and SMS service level.

Starting from 2010, Indonesian telecommunication regulator will fine operators which do not pass the standard quality of service.

Below are the measurement result.

Source: DG Postel
CSR: Call Success Rate
FWA: Fixed Wireless Access.

According to the data, Mobile-8, a CDMA operator, was the most performed network, both for Fren (cellular) and Hepi (FWA). Its total subscriber was only around 3m by the end of 2008.  Meanwhile, HCPT with its product call “3″, was the less perfromed network followed by Smart Telecom. HCPT is GSM/3G operator, while Smart Telecom is a CDMA operator.

The Indonesian Ministry of Communication and Information Technology announced last Tuesday that it is investigating telecommunications companies that do business with Israel.

This announcement came the day after the communication and information technology minister disclosed that Amdocs was being excluded from a local tender because the controlling shareholders are Israeli.

The Jakarta Globe reported that on Monday Communications and Information Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring said that Amdocs should not be included in the billing tender of Indonesian cellular service provider Telkom PT because Amdocs has Israeli shareholders. A spokesman said the ministry will investigate Israeli-affiliated telecommunications companies and sanction those found to be in violation of the regulation.

Sembiring is a member of PKS, the conservative Islamic Prosperous Justice Party, and said excluding Amdocs from the tender was justified because Israel has no diplomatic relations with Indonesia.

The newspaper also noted the criticism from a local consumer organization, whose analyst called Sembiring’s action “irrelevant” and unwise. The analyst said that Israeli technology was commonly used in the information-technology sector because Israel is a major producer of high-tech components, and Indonesia imports 90% of the telecommunication parts used in the country.

“Many of these could be from Israeli manufacturers or come from companies with Israeli shareholders,” he said. “How about products from Taiwan? Many of our telecommunications products are from Taiwan – another country that does not have diplomatic relations with Indonesia.”  (taken from: Haaretz.com)

According to the data released by DG Postel, Telkomsel is the highest payer of spectrum frequency fee. Up until end of June 2009, Telkomsel has paid just above IDR 1.6 trillion, which consist of Rp. 929b (900 MHz) and Rp. 724b (1800 MHz). Indosat comes second with IDR 940b, followed by XL with IDR 700b. Bakrie is the highest payer for CDMA operator with IDR 230b. The total spectrum fee until end of June is IDR 4.2 trillion.

Currently DG Postel released a consultation for spectrum fee based license. The white paper has been released. It can be downloaded here.

The pressure to spectrum fee stuck up since a few years ago. This was triggered with the cost that must be paid using current system, apparatus license. In this scheme, as written in the previous posting Indonesian Spectrum Levy, operator will pay as they build new equipments which use spectrum frequency. From time to time, the figures will increase and nowadays it has become so high. Just take Telkomsel for example. It has 2x30Mhz spectrum in 900MHz and 1800MHz. Until June 09, they have already paid, IDR 1.6 trillion or more than IDR 26b per MHz. This figure is far higher than 3G spectrum fee, with just IDR 16b per MHz.

The purpose this consultation is to make an equal treatment for all industry which uses the spectrum frequency. However, for the time being the focus is the cellular industry in which spectrum frequency is the vital element of the business. In this consultation, people are encourage to submit their comment to the DG Postel, from Oct 16th to the end of the month.