Mobile Internet rises from ashes of dot.com implosion

Mobile Internet rises from ashes of dot.com implosion

Vishnu K. Mahmud, Contributor, Jakarta

With the end of the Indonesian Internet boom, it may seem that
the business of making money online is no more. The fun is gone,
and there is nothing to impel users to return to late-breaking
news, no more large community, no more contests with free
giveaways! Plus, the costs of computer hardware and rising
telephone charges are also a hindrance for going back online.

But what about the mobile (cellular) community? Many of the
Indonesian portals of yesteryear are gone, yet the community is
still out there, looking for a replacement site to hang out and
exchange ideas. Mobile phones are more ubiquitous in Indonesia
compared to computers. Perhaps we may have another boom?

Take a look at the websites for some of the major cellular
providers in Indonesia. Satelindo (www.satelindogsm.com), IM3
(www.m3-access.com) and Telkomsel (www.telkomsel.com) all have
websites that offer their users additional services. From
accessing billing information online to games to news and message
boards, these "mini-portals" offer users features that were once
only available to the high-flying internet portals.

Some of these features can be accessed via your mobile phone
with a WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) browser and GPRS
(General Packet Radio Service) wireless connection, such as the
case with IM3. You can check out traffic updates, review e-mail
and play games with your cell phone. There are even services
using SMS, such as m-banking and news updates.

Of course, none of this is free. You would have to pay the SMS
charges or the amount of bandwidth used on the GPRS. But it's
peanuts compared to the constantly rising electricity and
telephone charges that come with using a computer.

For cellular providers, this is an excellent way to develop
their user base and garner additional profits. To obtain revenue,
having a verified user base is vital. This is not for spamming or
telesales purposes (because it would ultimately backfire!), but
to offer additional personal services to users who may find it
useful.

Signing up is verified online by the service that
automatically sends an SMS to authenticate the user ID and
Password. So there is no way that one user can have multiple log
in names, which can be a drain on the provider's resources. Once
registered, the user can be offered a number of services provided
by the cellular services either via the internet or their mobile
phone.

These services are offered in partnership by third party
operators, who can provide content such as ring tones, news,
games, and others for a nominal fee that is collected by the
cellular operator. A mobile service that offers the most content
and features would also be able to entice more users to switch
over to their company. Not a bad win-win situation.

NTT DoCoMo has always been considered the leader in the mobile
multimedia telecommunications field. While they provide the
infrastructure, hundreds of small operators offer the services
and content to entice users to download or visit. A once small
limited operation slowly became a large mobile internet
community.

Perhaps Indonesia's cellular providers, with their in-built
community, can succeed where others failed. The most important
aspect for a successful website or service is not the features,
number of hits per day or amount of users it has. It's revenue,
which the old dot cons failed to focus on. Revenue is the key to
servicing, expanding and surviving in this dog-eat-dog world.

Indonesian operators offering content for mobile phones are
also on the rise. Gila Bola (www.gilabola.com) offers the latest
global football scores via SMS, while Boleh's mobile services
(mobile.boleh.com) provides fun ringtones, pictures and logos.
Surely, there are plenty more services that can be offered by new
start-ups.

Considering that cell phones are becoming more and more
cheaper while offering additional features, it would not be too
long before Indonesia has a large number of people accessing the
internet via their mobile phone. Cell phones with large color
screens and built-in digital cameras are now infiltrating the
market, allowing users to not only take pictures but also share
it with friends and family. And while the land-based telephone
rates are going up, cellular rates may soon be lowered as more
and more people get connected. Who said the internet is dead? It
continues to evolve.