Joint-SMS feature: New toy for cellular users

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