Local cellular operators unite to boost SMS services

JAKARTA (JP): Three local global system for mobile communications (GSM) cellular phone operators will unite to give customers open access to short message services (SMS) within the next few months, a senior company executive says.

PT Excelcomindo Pratama's general manager for engineering, M. Danny Buldansyah, said on Tuesday that Excelcom and PT Satelindo were ready to implement the open SMS services this month, while another cellular operator, PT Telkomsel, said it was still in the process of solving some problems and planned to implement the system within the year.

The open system will allow customers from different operators to communicate via SMS. To date, customers can send messages only to people who use the same cellular phone operator.

Danny said the operators had been reluctant to implement the open SMS system due to the previous imbalance of the number of subscribers between operators, so the income received between them would vary widely.

"Now we can say that the number of subscribers is a bit more balanced. Even though Telkomsel's customer base may still be twice as big as Excel's, it's no longer three or four times the size," he explained.

Excelcom's subscribers totaled 860,000 customers last year and was expected to reach 1.1 million this year, Danny said.

Telkomsel's subscribers reached two million last year and was expected to reach more than three million by the end of the year.

There were also fears between operators that with the joint services, an operator may try to lure away the customers of other operators via SMS, Danny said.

He said that one of the regulations that would need to be settled before implementation was the limitation on certain SMS- based services operated by certain operators, such as mobile banking.

"We certainly don't want other operator's subscribers to take advantage of our value-added services," Danny said.

Telkomsel's director of commerce Purnomo Bambang Trisulo said the company still had to work out a few minor problems, such as the handling of customer complaints.

"But we are in the final stages, so we hope to implement the system as soon as possible," he said, without giving a definite time frame.

Satelindo company spokesman Indro B. Soebagio earlier said the unified service would greatly increase its traffic volume to 10 million messages a day compared to an average of 1.3 million a day.

Danny said Excel had anticipated the expected surge in SMS- traffic by expanding its SMS center to be able to handle 200,000 messages an hour, from the existing 100,000 messages an hour.

He said the cost of SMS between operators would not differ from the existing price of Rp 350 (about 32 U.S. cents) a message for Excelcom's postpaid and prepaid services.

Satelindo charges Rp 200 a message for its postpaid Satelindo GSM customers and Rp 250 a message for its prepaid Mentari customers, while Telkomsel charges Rp 250 a message for its postpaid SimPati customers and Rp 350 a message for its Kartu Halo prepaid customers. (tnt)