Phone bills to be mailed

Phone bills to be mailed

JAKARTA (JP): State-owned telecommunications company PT Telkom will start mailing telephone bills to customers in Jakarta in February, an official said yesterday.

Dadad Koestiwa, the company's operations and marketing director, said mailing bills to South Jakarta customers was aimed at improving services and was being handled by PT Datakom Media Perdana.

Dadad was quoted by Antara as saying the service was being jointly conducted by PT Datakom and state-owned postal service company PT Pos Indonesia.

"Because it is still in the trial stage, the customers are not being charged for the mailing. But they will be subject to a fee of Rp 1,750 (46 US cents) per bill as soon as the program is formalized," he said.

Customers in Jakarta will receive their bills for January 1998 in February, he said.

Dadad said customers currently had to check how much their bills were by phoning 109, which is usually busy especially several days before the 10th of each month, the deadline for settling bills.

He said the company had decided to mail bills to customers after a survey indicated that that was what they wanted.

Petrus Dariyanni, president of PT Datakom, said the trial was being hindered mainly by the long time the postal company took to deliver bills to customers.

Last month the company sent 328,000 bills to customers in South Jakarta, he said. (hhr)