Expecting more sophisticated mobile communications services

JAKARTA (JP): The explosive growth in the use of cordless communications tools has seen billions of personal messages sent through mailboxes, answering machines, beepers and PCs across the world.

In Indonesia, the number of cellular phone users has also increased significantly. The demand for new technology has allowed for the convergence of multiplying message types from different devices such as beepers, cellular handsets and palmtops.

Electric written messages on mobile communications devices are one kind of personal message arriving daily in Indonesia. Most of them originate from and are sent to cellular phones. But there is no data on how many such messages are trafficked per day as many cellular phone users in Indonesia use prepaid cards.

There are some 2,050,000 cellular phone subscribers in Indonesia, up from 1.2 million the previous year. Most users use GSM cellular technology which has the short messaging service (SMS). Some one million additional users are expected to join up this year.

However, some 60 percent of cell phone users use prepaid cards, meaning they do not have access to SMS.

SMS has grown so popular that many people, especially those new to the service, waste time operating their handsets to chat in the written word.

In some nations, GSM users can get weather reports, brief news, stock market quotes and traffic updates.

Unfortunately, GSM operators in Indonesia are less competitive in this service and are reluctant to modify their prepaid cards with SMS.

The number of SMS users would dramatically increase if the operators adjusted their technology to allow prepaid card subscribers access to SMS.

There has been attempts to converge several tools to facilitate SMS transmission. Certain Internet service operators and GSM providers have joined forces to allow users to send messages via PCs to handsets, but this service has not proved too popular.

This could be due to the low number of PC users in Indonesia. Meanwhile, the number of cellular phone users keeps surging. This is understandable because, as in most Asian nations, the cellular phone has surpassed the personal computer as a viable platform for digital content sales to consumers.

Some Indonesians enjoy simple SMS trafficking while the others are still wondering what SMS is even they own the latest model cell phone made by a leading manufacturer. In the meantime, other people around the globe have begun to enjoy the newest, unique services allowing users to initiate and return voice calls and send and receive faxes, e-mail and other kinds of messages in various locations on various devices based on the Internet's telephony potential communications services. Christianto