Joint SMS services available soon

JAKARTA (JP): Subscribers of PT Telkomsel, PT Satelit Palapa Indonesia (Satelindo) and PT Excelcomindo Pratama cellular operators will be able to send text messages to each other beginning on Thursday.

Excelcomindo's general manager for value added services Agung B. Laksono said all three cellular operators were currently testing their joint short message service (SMS).

"We will be one of the few countries to have implemented open SMS," he said following the signing of the cooperation agreement.

Tien Thinh Pham, Satelindo's cellular phone vice president for marketing and product management, said the plan to open the service had existed for over a year, but was only realized now due to the enormous growth of SMS traffic.

"A year ago, Mentari SMS traffic only amounted to about 1.5 million messages a month, while it is now more than 30 million messages a month, and still increasing," he said.

Pham said that with the open SMS service he expects Satelindo's SMS traffic to grow by 30 percent until the end of the year and then another 50 percent by the second semester of 2002.

Agung said SMS traffic for Excelcomindo was currently about 800,000 messages a day and he expected a two-fold increase with the inter-operator SMS.

They said the price for using SMS would not be increased from the existing rates.

Telkomsel charges Rp 250 (about $0.023) a message for its post-paid Kartu Halo customers and Rp 350 a message for its SimPati pre-paid customers.

Satelindo charges Rp 200 a message for its post-paid Satelindo GSM customers and Rp 250 a message for its pre-paid Mentari customers, while Excelcomindo charges Rp 350 a message for its post-paid and pre-paid services.

Telkomsel's general manager for marketing, Erik Meijer, said the new SMS facility was a basic service for sending text messages between subscribers of different operators. (tnt)