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)