Joint-SMS feature: New toy for cellular users

JAKARTA (JP): You may find that cellular users in Indonesia are busier with their handsets these days.

They do not speak but have a particular look on their face while their thumbs busily work the buttons on their communications gadgets more frequently.

They are enjoying a new facility where the three local operators of mobile communications jointly provide access to the short message (SMS) feature.

The joint-SMS feature allows customers from the three different global system for mobile (GSM) communications providers (ProXL, Satelindo, Telkomsel) to communicate through SMS messages. Previously, customers could send messages only to people who subscribed to the same GSM provider, but the barriers were broken at the beginning of last week.

Most users are fond of this new service as they can send SMS messages to more people though it sometimes consists of only an irritating joke.

Agung B. Laksono, general manager for value-added service of PT Excelcomindo Pratama, which provides ProXL, said the new feature had created a new behavior among cellular users in certain respects.

"It creates an option in using the cellular phone. SMS is a convenient and cheap application. People will use the service to inform their friends about something which does not need an instant response or confirmation.

"When receiving a message, recipients do not have to answer any calls, especially if they are in the middle of a meeting," he said.

SMS is an inexpensive way to communicate. It just takes longer to finish a message on the phone. Then messages can be sent to any cellular phone in Indonesia at a very cheap rate compared if you were to dial up the recipient, particularly if it is long distance.

Director of operations at Telkomsel Laurens J.M. Bulters said Telkomsel users were even able to send SMS messages to overseas users who subscribe to operators which have signed a roaming agreement with Telkomsel.

The cost of a SMS message is Rp 350 (about 30 U.S. cents) for ProXL postpaid and prepaid services, while Satelindo charges Rp 200 a message for its postpaid Satelindo GSM customers and Rp 250 a message for its prepaid Mentari users.

Telkomsel charges Rp 250 a message for its postpaid KartuHalo subscribers and Rp 350 a message for its simPATI prepaid users.

Each message is limited to 160 characters, due to the capacity of most handsets, which is also in accordance with the capacity of the server of each operator.

Agung said the service had been technically possible for a long time, just like the voice connection, but was not introduced sooner due to a low demand.

"The feature was introduced when we had a real demand for it," he said.

GSM operators have also waited for more proportional figures among overall users. Customers at Telkomsel have reached 2.2 million, 850,000 at Excelcomindo and 1.3 million at Satelindo.

Traffic

The three GSM providers are optimistic that SMS traffic will dramatically increase after the introduction of this new feature.

Satelindo has boasted that this service greatly increased SMS traffic volume through its network to 45 million messages a month, which has more than doubled.

Excelcomindo has also estimated to see a similar figure, some 48 million per month, by the end of this year.

"SMS traffic has shown a significant increase at Excelcomindo. There were six million messages sent in early 2000, and that figure doubled in the first half, reaching 18 million by the end of last year," said Agung.

Telkomsel expects to see a significant increase in its SMS traffic this year.

Data from the GSM association shows that SMS traffic in the world will total 25 billion messages this year, up over 66 percent from 15 million in 2000.

It is estimated that the SMS service provides some 3 percent to 5 percent of the overall revenue of a GSM operator.

Content

What do GSM users send when they use the SMS feature?

There has been no research on this yet, but many users admit that they receive, send or forward jokes only.

"I got a message from a number that was not in my handset memory. When I checked my address book, I saw it belonged to an acquaintance I met a long time ago. What irritated me was it was only junk," said Benny, a 27-year-old executive.

He said he did not respond to the sender, but received more junk SMS messages in the following days.

"For some people it is nice to receive any kind of message, just to show that someone is thinking of them. But I think it would be much nicer if they didn't influence others to send useless jokes through the service. They could have sent a greeting instead," he said.

Another user, Dicky, said he did not mind receiving any kind of SMS message as he would be able to resend it to his other friends.

"It's fun to get SMS messages. Sometimes, when I get bored in a meeting, sending a SMS message is entertaining," he said.

As Agung said, sending SMS messages has become a new type of behavior.

Excelcomindo has published a "dictionary" to facilitate users in sending SMS faster and easier. Many of the terms are familiar to those who use chat rooms on the Internet, such as UAT (where are you), BRT (be right there), ATM (at the moment), F2T (free to talk), ICQ (I seek you), F2F (face to face), JK (just kidding) and TTFN (ta-ta for now).

This behavior is, more or less, related with the lifestyle of cellular phone users in Indonesia. More than half of some 4.2 million cellular phone users in Indonesia are youngsters.

Meanwhile, Siemens recently revealed in a study that 77 cellular phone users carry their handsets during holidays. It also shows that 80 percent of them want convenience.

So prepare yourself for various SMS messages. Again, it depends if you use this feature wisely and how you respond to unneeded SMS messages.

-- I. Christianto