Beeper rivalry leads to price war

Beeper rivalry leads to price war

JAKARTA (JP): Even though the government has set minimum
subscription fees for radio paging services, several beeper
operators are currently attempting to cope with the increasing
competition by offering lower fees.

Karna Brata Lesmana, chief commissioner of PT Duta Pertiwi
Santosa, a private firm operating the Starpage beeper service,
acknowledged yesterday that the government has set the minimum
subscription fee for beeper services at Rp 27.500 (US$11.72),
including the 10 percent value added tax, per month.

However, several operators currently offer a subscription fee
of only Rp 25,000 per month, he said.

He said that subscribers should consider not only the levels
of the subscription fees but also the services provided by the
operators before deciding on a pager service, including the speed
of the transferring of messages and the paging coverage.

Karna said that in order to get more customers, many radio
paging operators also provide subsidies on the sales of pager
terminals.

A subsidizing operator may recover the costs of pager
terminals only after collecting subscription fees for two years,
he said.

He admitted that losing a subscriber who had subscribed for
less than two years would disadvantage the operator.

Duta Pertiwi, which involves Motorola of the United States in
its Starpage service, currently serves 70,000 subscribers in
Jakarta.

Karna said that his company plans to enter the market in
Ujungpandang in South Sulawesi later this year, with some 3,000
subscribers expected to register in the first year of operation.

Throughout the country, there are currently 400,000 beeper
subscribers. (icn)