Local operators heading for '2.5G' technology

Tantri Yuliandini, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

Voice transmission is still the darling of Indonesian mobile phone users, while data transmission and applications over the mobile system have yet to gain enough momentum for local operators to worry about it.

But as the rest of the world plunges head-first to embrace the third generation of mobile services, or 3G, it would seem that Indonesia -- or at least the operators -- would refuse to be left behind.

While it is true that users would have to wait some time for 3G to ever set foot on Indonesian soil, cellular operators are now vying to provide their customers with the next best thing: the two-and-a-half generation (2.5G) mobile services.

The 2.5G technology was invented to bridge the gap between the current 2G and the future 3G technologies for the Global System for Mobile communications (GSM), currently the most popular mobile system in the country.

3G has been hyped as the ultimate in mobile phone technology, with speed reaching up to 144 Kbps or up to 2 megabits per second from fixed locations, it allows powerful multimedia capabilities such as video streaming.

For Indonesia's four biggest GSM operators -- PT Telekomunikasi Selular (Telkomsel); PT Satelit Palapa Indonesia (Satelindo), along with PT Excelcomindo Pratama and PT Indosat MultiMedia Mobile (IM3), the 2.5G or the General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) will boost speed data transmission to up to 115 kilobits per second (Kbps) as compared with the current 9.6 Kbps.

Also, because the data transferred is in "packets," billing could be done per kilobit downloaded instead of per second as it is currently done, making the data transfer much faster and cheaper to access.

Of the four GSM companies operating nationally, only IM3 has launched its GPRS services, albeit still available free of charge due to billing difficulties. But the other three operators are not far behind.

Telkomsel and Satelindo have both begun a technical trial of GPRS since last year, but has yet to decide when to launch the service commercially.

"We want to see the development of the market first," Telkomsel's director of finance Jusuf Kurnia said, echoing the statement of Satelindo's vice president for cellular services, Tien Thinh Pham.

Both agreed that the service would be launched commercially sometime during the coming year.

"Demand from the public for GPRS isn't all that high. The way I see it, the driving force behind the deployment of GPRS is really from the handset companies," Excelcomindo general manager for engineering, M. Danny Buldansyah, said.

Handset companies such as Nokia, Ericsson, and Siemens already began marketing their GPRS-ready hand phones since late last year, "so it is important for marketing that the operators provide the service," Danny said, adding that Excelcomindo was likely to deploy GPRS in the second half of the year.

Meanwhile, since its initial launch in the second half of 2001, IM3's GPRS has attracted between 5,000 to 6,000 users of its 175,000 subscribers, according to IM3 president Hasnul Suhaimi.

"But this could be because the service is still provided for free," he said.

IM3 plans to begin commercial billing for its GPRS service after April at between Rp 25 (about US$0.0028) to Rp 40 per kilobit downloaded for wireless application protocol (WAP) contents, and about a tenth of the cost for web contents, Hasnul said.

Despite the billing, Hasnul said that he is optimistic the number of users would increase in the future, as the availability of more GPRS-ready handsets in the second half of the year increases as well.

However, the more pressing problem, according to operators, was the limited availability of content. "A platform without content won't work, meanwhile, we operators cannot provide them ourselves -- we don't have the capability for it," Hasnul said.

He said that currently IM3's GPRS platform was mainly used to access the Internet, rather than specially developed mobile contents like those developed for the WAP.

"Why do you think DoCoMo was a success? Because it cooperates with more than 4,000 content providers, that's why," Hasnul added.

Indonesia is also host to two other cellular systems, the Advanced Mobile Phone System (AMPS), and the Nordic Mobile Telephones (NMT), but these systems are less popular due to its older analog technology, and limited coverage area.

AMPS operators are PT Telesera, PT Metrosel, and PT Komselindo; while NMT operator is PT Mobisel. These companies operate regionally and are currently in the process of switching to the more advanced Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) system.

According to state telecommunications company PT Telkom, as of September, the number of cellular subscribers totaled 5.3 million -- compared with 3.2 million in the same period in the year 2000.

This number is expected to increase to between 9 million and 11 million this year, surpassing the number of fixed-line telephone subscribers.

Telkomsel holds about 46 percent of the market with 3.25 million subscribers at the end of last year, followed by Satelindo, with 1.5 million subscribers, and Excelcomindo, with 1.1 million subscribers.

Although still small, the contribution of mobile data services is increasing at a rapid pace, contributing about seven to eight percent last year, compared with only two percent the previous year, Hasnul said.

This rapid climb was attributed to the success of the short message service (SMS), which had enjoyed staggering success last year after GSM operators decided to introduce inter-operator SMS. SMS traffic more than tripled after the inter-operator service was introduced in May.

Various applications then followed similar to those developed for the flopped WAP, such as information on demand and mobile banking and today, local GSM operators provide information on the latest movies, news, stock prices, and the hugely popular ring- tone and logo pickups, based on the SMS.

The SMS became a hit simply because it is easy to use, and cheap. Unlike the WAP that is charged by the time spent on the network, SMS is charged by the message.

But the advent of the GPRS platform may bring hope to the WAP, as it will make transmission faster with billing charged by the "packet."