Telkom to hold telephone card exhibition
JAKARTA (JP): The state-owned telecommunications company PT Telkom and PTT Telecom Netherlands will hold a one-month international telephone card exhibition called Indo-Phonecards '94.
Erik Meyer, public relations manager of PTT Telecom Netherlands, told The Jakarta Post yesterday that Indo- Phonecards, the first exhibition of telephone cards ever in Indonesia, will be held from Dec. 9 to Jan. 8, 1995.
The exhibition is presented in cooperation with Museum Telekomunikasi. The telephone cards have been designed by PT Mutiara Bangkit Citra.
He said the exhibition will take place at Museum Telekomunikasi in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, East Jakarta. Over 2,000 telephone cards from around the world will be on display.
"The exhibition is aimed at increasing the community's appreciation of telephone cards," he said.
The show is expected to provide a forum for an estimated 10,000 Indonesian collectors to discus, observe, buy, sell and exchange telephone cards in order to update their collections.
The display will include over 500 telephone cards from Indonesia and 100 from the Netherlands. The reminder will come from 120 other countries throughout the world.
Mahdi Darwis, the manager of Museum Telekomunikasi, said that this event is very important because telephone cards are increasingly becoming an inseparable part of life for many people.
"In the past members of the community, who wanted to make a long distance and international phone call from a public phone, were forced to bring coins with them. This is impractical," he said.
"With the emergence of the telephone cards, which are paid in advance for a certain number of pulses, this problem has largely been solved," he added.
The continuously growing demand for telephone cards shows the community's great enthusiasm for this medium, Mahdi said.
Besides being a means of communication, telephone cards have also emerged as a popular collectors' item. Collecting cards is even becoming more popular than collecting stamps.
Jusuf Kadir, the designer of most Indonesian phone cards and a well-known collector, said that phone card mania has hit the world.
He said this exhibition is expected to become a source of information for telephone card collectors.
The Indo-Phonecards event will have three major features: the exhibition itself, a trade fair for telephone cards, to be held until Dec. 12, and a seminar on Dec. 10 and 11.
Speakers at the seminar will include both local and overseas experts in the field of telephone cards, including Walden R. Bakara of Telkom, Jacques Bartels from PTT Telecom Netherlands and Eduard Schreiber from Austria. (hhr)