Joint SMS services available soon

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)