Tantri Yuliandini

Tantri Yuliandini
The Jakarta Post
Jakarta

Local operators heading for '2.5G' technology

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."