GSM phone users surge in 1st quarter of 1999

JAKARTA (JP): The number of active cellular subscribers in Indonesia increased by 69.1 percent to over 1.37 million in the first quarter of 1999 from 815,577 in the corresponding period of 1998, according to telecommunications company PT Telkom.

Telkom said that the steep increases between 57.2 percent and 125.5 percent were seen particularly in the number of subscribers of the global system for mobile communications (GSM) operators.

There are currently three GSM operators, namely PT Telkomsel, PT Satelit Palapa Indonesia (Satelindo) and PT Excelcomindo Pratama.

Subscribers of Telkomsel increased by 57.2 percent to reach 566,167 users for the first quarter of 1999 from 360,063 for the same period last year.

Subscribers of Satelindo surged by 108.4 percent to 491,964 users from 236,113, while subscribers of Excelcomindo doubled by 125.5 percent to reach 211,200 from 93,651 users.

According to the head of industry policy and business cooperation of the Indonesian Cellular Telephone Association (ATSI), Rudiantara, the increases were due to the GSM operators' successful promotion of prepaid card products.

He said many non-GSM customers had also switched to one of the three GSM operators.

"Many have not really quit using cellular phones and turned to GSM, mostly as prepaid card customers. I can't give you the exact figure of those who switched to GSM," he told The Jakarta Post recently.

According to Telkom's report, an Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS) operator, PT Metrosel Nusantara, lost 31.9 percent of 38,990 subscribers registered as of March 31 last year, leaving the firm with only 26,528 subscribers as of March 31 this year.

Two other AMPS operators, Komselindo and PT Telesera, each recorded only slight increases of 10.6 percent and 3.9 percent to reach 66,331 subscribers and 6,792 subscribers respectively in the first quarter of 1999.

Subscribers of Komselindo totaled 60,000 and Telesera's 6,535 in the first quarter of last year.

The country's only Nordic Mobile Telephone (NMT) operator, Mobisel, lost 48.1 percent of its total 20,225 subscribers registered by March 13 last year. Mobisel now serves only 10,489 customers.

Rudiantara said AMPS and NMT operators had not only lost customers to GSM operators due to older technology but also to limited products and services to offer customers.

The NMT system was introduced here in the mid-1980s, followed by AMPS in the late 1980s and GSM in the early 1990s, he said.

He said unlike the AMPS and NMT operators, GSM operators offered customers more choices of services and products.

GSM subscribers could choose the regular postpaid billing system or the recently introduced prepaid system.

Telkomsel introduced its first value-refillable prepaid card product called simPATI in late 1997, followed by Satelindo with its Mentari in early 1998 and Excelcomindo with its XL-Pro in late 1998.

Excelcomindo's corporate communications manager Ventura Elisawati said the sales of prepaid cards far exceeds that of a postpaid billing system, resulting in a higher number of prepaid subscribers than postpaid.

She said Exelcomindo now have around 154,000 active prepaid customers, compared to about 60,000 postpaid.

A Satelindo executive recently said the company sold an average of 3,000 starter packs of Mentari prepaid cards per day and over 10,000 Mentari refill cards per month.

The number of GSM subscribers took about 92 percent of the total cellular users in the country.(cst)