Although there are an increasingly large number of BlackBerry users here in Indonesia, Research In Motion (RIM) still has much room for improvement in the country.
Acting on behalf of its citizens, the Indonesian government demanded a number of things of RIM. Some demands were quite controversial, such as the adult content filtering; while others raised issues of taxation and responsibility. One demand – to give authorities lawful access to secure services such as BBM – touched on issues of privacy and freedom of speech. The government, represented by the Ministry of Communication and Informatics, last week stated it was a little disappointed with RIM’s progress on these commitments.
Indonesia’s telecommunications operators have intervened as well. Telkomsel, Indosat, XL Axiata, Bakrie Telecom, Axis Telekom Indonesia, Hutchison CP Telecommunications, and Smart Telecom sent out letters to the government, demanding five things of RIM for better BlackBerry service. As quoted from Detikinet, those are:
- RIM should build a server plant here to localize data traffic in Indonesia, so that latency will decrease, and service costs can be reduced.
- RIM should provide monitoring tools to monitor its performance so as to minimize customer complaints if and when critical problems occur.
- RIM should devise a transparent “Service Level Agreement,” so that RIM’s standard service quality is clear to evaluate.
- RIM should improve its handset terminal performance.
- More importantly, RIM provides authorized technical experts in Indonesia for troubleshooting issues.
“All this time, operators always get blamed by the users when there’s a problem with BlackBerry services, whereas the problem does not always come from the operators,” Gatot S. Dewa Broto, the ministry’s chief spokesman explained. These five demands were disclosed by the government to RIM in a recent progress report meeting.
Just last week, RIM released its latest handsets, the Bold 9900 and Torch 9810. With more and more BlackBerry devices sold here, I second the government and operators’ demands that BlackBerry services should be improving. But of course, RIM, the government, operators, and users, need to keep working together in order to continue implementing improvements that customers can benefit from.
What do you reckon, readers: five sensible demands, or a bullying campaign on a successful vendor?
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“RIM should devise a transparent “Service Level Agreement,” so that RIM’s standard service quality is clear to evaluate.” Bullshit, no fkin operator in Indonesia, even no fkin internet provider gives SLA,
“RIM should build a server plant here to localize data traffic in Indonesia, so that latency will decrease, and service costs can be reduced.” Indon operator all slow network and low bandwidth, don’t blame on RIM, fk you.
“One demand – to give authorities lawful access to secure services such as BBM ” LOL, Government want to know when I ask my girlfrind for sex? fk corrupt gov
PS: I’m Indonesian so I know
Let’s support local phone makers with android OS and get Apple to boost iPad and iPhone to at least becoming cheaper than Blackberry… I know BB from the very beginning they entered Indonesia… Guess what, only BBM the killer app that made RIM they way they are today… So, we can always leave our BB at home and carry something else if they continue to be arrogant
I seriously doubt that the BB performance issue is related to BIS quality of service in Indonesia. As a BIS user in Singapore, I rarely experience the lag phenomenon, or “bengong” as Indonesian would say, on my BB.
These operators are trying to wash their hands from the fact that their network are so over subscribed right now. Case in point, as an iPhone 4 and BB user, whenever I encountered a problem with connection on my iPhone, I’d also have the same issue with my BB. Actually the problem with BB isn’t more noticeable because of how BIS service is more efficient than just regular internet traffic on iPhone.
To me that points to the fact that the network owned by these providers are just not reliable at all. So they should stop blaming others for their problems and concentrate on providing better service to their customers in the first place.