From the left: Andy Zain (director of Jakarta Founders Institute) and Alexander Rusli (CEO of Indosat)

There is good potential of growth for mobile apps in Indonesia, and the future looks bright as both Indonesian telco Indosat and Jakarta Founders Institute (JKTFI) are looking to jumpstart your ideas and prototype mobile apps with the Indosat Wireless Innovation Contest (IWIC).

In its seventh year, Indosat and JKFTI will hold three big activities: a roadshow seminar to 18 universities in Indonesia, a boot camp for 40 selected teams, and two incubation programs. After undergoing the incubation process, there will be a separate negotiation process held with Indosat to talk further about how the telco can help market the apps as well as a few other details.

If your mobile apps idea falls into IWIC’s seven categories of game, sport, social media, music, video, m-commerce, or info, you might want to give this a try. The IWIC events will be held through November. You can check out more information about it on IWIC’s website.

A few months ago we reported that the Indonesian telcos were planning to build a chat app platform together to battle the aggresively expanding foreign chat apps like WeChat, Line, and KakaoTalk. We questioned how the various telcos could actually work together to build it without it being a management nightmare.

Well, a couple of days ago Indonesian telco Indosat revealed (via Detik) that the company is readying itself – alone – to launch its WhatsApp-inspired service in the third quarter of this year at the earliest. The app will convert the chats from a smartphone device into SMS when being sent to a feature phone. In that way, the company will get to keep some revenue from the SMS industry.

The telco is going to build the application with a local third-party developer. The company is still in the process of choosing the developers now. The Indosat representative said that they are doing this to help the local developers too.

If the plan comes to fruition, then Indosat would definitely prioritize its own app, including possibly giving more affordable pricing for its own messaging app. It still remains to be seen if the telco will be able to develop something better than WhatsApp, Line, and KakaoTalk in such a short time. Chinese telco China Mobile built its own messaging platform a few years ago called Fetion; after initial success, it soon started to it lose out to rivals like WeChat in the chat app battleground.

(Source: Detik)

One of Indosat’s emergency posts. Credit: TabloidPulsa.co.id

Communication is an essential part of our daily lives, and it’s even more essential during times of crisis such as the recent floods here in Jakarta. Thankfully few companies and individuals stepped up to help out the public in a time of urgent need.

Telkomsel, Axis, XL Axiata, and Indosat gave away free telecommunication services during the city-wide disaster. The afore-mentioned three telcos gave away free SMSes which can be sent to fellow Telkomsel and Axis users ¹. While the latter telco partnered with RIM to give away free Blackberry services like BBM and IDR 5,000 credit (52 US cents) to be used to communicate with other Indosat users.

Telkom, Indosat, and XL Axiata also provided assistance to flood victims in the form of emergency supplies from their emergency posts, as well as donations. Telkom’s posts located all over Jakarta will continue to provide free medication, SMSes, voice calls, and internet until January 27th. I hope the other telco posts can continue their assistance until then as well, which marks the end of the emergency period designated by the Jakarta government.

During the crisis, housing complexes that had their electricity shut down might have had difficulty charging their mobile phones. But Detik reported about a person named Fani who made a generator available for people to use to charge their phones, costing IDR 5,000 (52 cents) for every hour of charging. She managed to earn around IDR 500,000 ($52) each day. While some might see it as opportunistic, it was certainly a service that was much needed during that time, and the price was reasonable and not at all exploitive.

With phones charged and topped up, people could access things like Google’s Jakarta flood resources page.

It is wonderful to see how people rally together during the crisis. Several e-commerce stores also did their part to help ease the problem, such as Multiply and Zalora, as we mentioned earlier today.

(Sources: WartaEkonomi.co.id, TabloidPulsa.co.id, Detik #1, and #2)

Telkomsel was the first carrier to open online pre-orders in Indonesia, and although its carrier packages are the most expensive in the country, the company was still able to sell out its 2,000 handsets during pre-orders. Today’s launch in Gandaria City mall was mostly for the 300 invited customers who had bought the phones online:

XL Axiata was the only carrier that did not start online pre-orders for the iPhone 5, instead the company held its ‘Antri Like a King’ program which promised comforts and conveniences for its queuing customers at two malls – Central Park and Senayan City. Interestingly, XL Axiata offered generous discounts of 50 percent and IDR 1.5 million ($156) to the first 50 and 100 customers respectively at each mall. XL Axiata might be the carrier that managed to gather the largest crowd:

Queue at Senayan City Mall

Crowd that are waiting for the Central Park Mall to open

Indosat was the only carrier that held its launch away from any malls, focusing on two Seven Eleven stores in Jakarta. Indonesia’s Seven Elevens are popular among teenagers as late-night hang-out places, and the two selected places became more crowded particularly during midnight. Indosat’s iPhone 5 launch offered discounts between IDR 1 million ($104) to IDR 2 million ($208), but still that wasn’t enough to spark the kind of big-bang launch seen by its two rivals.

On the other hand, Indosat also held a fun offline contest to win an iPhone 5, in conjunction with e-commerce store Lazada Indonesia, at midnight at the fX Mall. After several grueling questions for the eleven [1] on the quiz panel – about Apple mainly, which included naming the third founder besides Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak; it was even asked which is the Japanese meat dish that Steve Jobs enjoyed even though he was a vegetarian – one person was able to consistently dominate and win the contest, he was Handoko Tjung. He was one of the four that was chosen by us on Wednesday (in this post) to go into the quiz.

This morning, the winner tweeted this:

I JUST WON MYSELF A NEW IPHONE 5!!! WOOHOOOOOOOOOO!!! Thanks @lazadaid @indosat and @techinasia for the chance! twitter.com/handokotjung/s…

— Handoko Tjung (@handokotjung) December 13, 2012

Handoko explained that the iPhone 5 he won is his first iPhone ever. Although he used a Blackberry handset, he is a big admirer of Apple and had watched several documentaries about the company and Jobs. That gave him a huge advantage when answering the questions in the contest. Handoko was chosen by us for his comment below. Congratulations man!

Hi I’m @handokotjung , and I want that iPhone 5 as an early christmas present, I’ve never got one from santa in the past 26 year. I think I’ve always been in the naughty list.

WELL GUESS WHAT SANTA? SCREW YOU AND YOUR NAUGHTY or NICE LIST!
I’ll get my own christmas present!

Ehm.

That being said, that retina display is pretty slick. Gimme gimme gimme.

[Sources: Kompas Tekno #1, #2 #3, and liputan6, pictures too]

Rocket Internet’s e-commerce site Lazada Indonesia, together with Indonesian operator Indosat will hold a ten-person trivia contest tomorrow at midnight in Jakarta. And it will award the lucky winner with a brand new iPhone 5. TechinAsia is happy to help them choose two participants for the trivia contest, so read on for more details about the contest:

• When: Thursday, December 13th, 2012, from 11pm to Friday, December 14th, 1am.
• Place: Jakarta, venue will be disclosed to chosen participants
• Criteria: Must be a Jakarta resident

To be chosen by TechinAsia, you will only need to make a comment on this post to let us know that you want in on the iPhone 5 quiz contest, and also include your Twitter handle in the comment [1]. Then tweet this post with the hashtag #iPhone5TIA. At 9pm Jakarta time tonight, we’ll read the comments, pick an interesting one, and then we’ll contact you via Twitter tonight. Be sure to follow @techinasia so we can drop you a line via DM with details.

Good luck!

UPDATED at 9:30pm Jakarta time: Congratulations to @pemirsa, @handokotjung, @mikaelHS and @glrhn, who all go into tomorrow’s quiz. Yes, Lazada and Indosat later said we can pick four, not just two. Now you’ve passed the lucky part, but tomorrow night you still have the quiz to tackle. Good luck to our picks in the ten-person quiz! The contest can be followed on Twitter with the #superexperience hashtag.

Apple’s third carrier partner in Indonesia for the iPhone 5, Indosat, is going to begin accepting pre-orders tomorrow. The operator is working with Mandiri Bank’s e-commerce store Tokone.com to sell the most affordable iPhone 5 bundling packages so far in the country. The price list is below (in rupiah, then dollars):

Interestingly, Indosat sells the white 32GB iPhone 5 for IDR 750,000 ($78) cheaper than the black version. The price listed above is the final price, including zero percent interest for up to two years of monthly payments. Indosat will also give monthly bonuses of talk time, SMS, and data services during the payment period. The handsets can only be ordered by using Mandiri’s credit cards.

If compared to Telkomsel’s cheapest bundling packages, Indosat’s iPhone deal is cheaper by IDR 1 million ($104). The steep price difference may be able to convince a few customers to go with Indosat instead.

Indosat’s website states that the pre-order have been available since December 7th, but after confirming it with a company representative, the pre-orders are actually going to start tomorrow as a result of some technical problems. XL Axiata hasn’t released its iPhone 5 price list yet, and it looks like the company doesn’t plan to open online pre-orders like Apple’s two other partners.

For more information, you can check out the Indosat and Tokone websites.

Last weekend, while we had our Startup Asia Bandung Hackathon, there was another interesting event taking place in over in Jakarta: the Indonesia Game Show. The event showcased numerous local games and also had its own competitions for both the gamers and game developers there. Here’s the list of the winning game developers across eight categories:

In the 3D game category, Garuda Games, which recently was one of the winners at Sparxup 2012, snatched first place with Steampunk Deathmatch. Agate Studio’s Vindicta, a robot first-person-shooting game earned second place.

In the 2D game category, Toge Productions, which also made the zombie-virus mobile game Infectonator that we reviewed recently, is still a force to be reckoned with on the PC gaming platform. The game developer received the first place for Relic of War, a strategy game taking place in 1940s war scene. Divine Kids’ very fun first-person-fighting game Campus Fighter in the second place.

Agate Studio’s flagship game Football Saga 2 made it to first place among Flash-based browser games. The developers recently told us it was created to help inspire and motivate the national football team. Ulin Gameworks’ game to promote awareness of Indonesia’s Orangutan, The Utans was awarded second place in this category.

The Komodo Island-inspired Save Komo game earned Creacle Studio the first place in the non-flash based category. Glass Finger’s Groovy Grape went on to become the runner-up.

Mobile games

Touchten’s smash-hit mobile game Infinite Sky, which is a fun fighter pilot shoot-out game, took the top spot in the smartphone category. Maximize’s Push the Box, which tells a story of a piggie who wants to save his friends from the big bad wolf, earned the second-place award.

There are more players in the featurephone gaming industry to look out for. Mintsphere’s Trigger Knight. Tinker Games also won this category with Backyard Madness, where you play the grandma in shooting away the mutated piggies at the backyard. Interestingly, both games are also available on smartphone platforms such as iOS and Android.

Indosat’s Tamagochi-like mobile game Planet Monstar earned the award for ‘Innovative Mobile Game.’ Here’s a video of the gameplay:

Choco Arts, which featured in CompFest 2012, won the ‘Favorite Local Game Developer’ award, while Dismal Happiness earned the second spot. I’m not too sure how they judged this particular category, but it’s a great boost for these two companies.

[Source: Techno.Ghiboo.com, image: DailySocial]

The “Soul of the Nation” movement finally reached its goal last night. Videos from over 2,000 people singing Indonesia’s national anthem, “Bagimu Negeri,” were broadcast by Indosat on giant screens over three different stages at the Java Soulnation Festival 2012. The videos acted as a choir for singer Raisa Andriana as she sang. “Digital Sing Along with Raisa,” part of Indosat’s Super WiFi campaign, broke the record for the biggest digital recording choir in Indonesia.

Raisa and the Indosat team received an award for the record from MURI (Indonesian Record Museum) on Indosat Stage. According to MURI, up until 5:30 pm on Sunday, the project gathered 2,287 videos and 2,841 pledges.

On stage, Raisa expressed her concern about escalating crime among the nation’s youth, possibly aluding to a recent assault and killing of a high school student. With this project, Raisa hopes to bring some positive soul back to the country and its young people by asking people to pledge their love for Indonesia. The lyrics of the song “Bagimu Negeri” itself is about a pledge to serve the country. Raisa said on stage in front of thousands of her fans:

Nowadays, teens are often identified with something bad, like drugs and violence. Now this is the time for us to show that teens do not act like that.

The Soul of the Nation project is asking people to visit its website and connect to the Facebook to pledge. While the video submission process for Java Soulnation 2012 ended on September 29th, people can still show support by sharing the videos on Facebook or on Twitter by using the #soulofthenation hashtag.

People can also show support by calling 959 with their Indosat numbers to recorded themselves singing “Bagimu Negeri.” The Java Soulnation 2012 mobile app also has special features to support this campaign.

Photo: jangantulalit.com

Indosat recently introduced a new service called Super WiFi. With this service, any of its mobile customers can connect to Indosat owned hotspots without having to manually login to those hotspots. This mechanism is enabled by Indosat’s new sim card technology, EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol).

Currently, Indosat provides no fewer than 700 hotspots in various public spaces in Java and Bali. And the company promises to provide even more hotspots in the future. Detik cites the chief commercial officer of Indosat, Erik Meijer, who explains:

We will continue to develop and enhance the Indosat Super WiFi service. So in a short time, we will expand to big cities elsewhere in Indonesia by adding 30,000 more hotspots. We realized that speedy WiFi services is key in this business.

The new Super-WiFi service will target customers who need a faster, more comfortable internet experience.

For the time being, the service is available for free for all Indosat customers. Although Indosat stated that the free offer is for promotional only, it does not specify when that promotion will be over. With access speed of up to 2 Mbps and unlimited data cap, the offer is pretty good for most Indonesians.

For more information on how the service works, you can check out the video walk-through below (in Bahasa Indonesia).

After being postponed since the end of 2011 and rescheduled three times, Indonesia’s Ministry of Communication and Information Technology finally announced that the channel 11 and 12 3G frequency tender will be held later in September 2012. But the government department still hasn’t set the date.

This tender will be a major deal for all mobile carriers and the public. The capacity of two 3G channels for carriers was already overloaded, sometimes disrupting data services, or even voice calls and SMS. So the importance of this third channel cannot be overstated for the nation’s mobile users and industry.

Kompas cites the founder of the IndoLTE Forum, Heru Sutadi, as predicting that by November 2012, data traffic will have increased around 90 percent. He worries that Indonesian consumers will not be able to enjoy mobile services smoothly next year without the new 3G channel. According to Heru, the number of 3G broadband users in Indonesia has reached 107.35 million up to the first quarter of 2012 (as quoted by Investor Daily).

Mobile operator Telkomsel, as the biggest operator, has approximately 40 million data subscribers, Indosat 31.2 million, XL Axiata 27.9 million, 4.25 million from Axis Telekom Indonesia, and Hutchison CP Telecom/HCPT has 4 million.

Head of PR at the Ministry of Communications and Information Technology, Gatot S. Dewa Broto, said in the interview that the third 3G channel tender fee will be IDR 200 billion (over US$20 million). This new price shows the escalation from the previous tender of IDR 160 to 175 billion. That price excluded the carriers’ up-front fees and annual fee.

According to Detik, a selection of additional blocks of 3G plans will be announced on September 17, and the retrieval of documents selection on September 19 to 24, 2012. ‘Telkomsel, XL Axiata, Axis Telecom Indonesia, and Hutchison CP Telecom all hope to acquire the last two blocks of the 12-block 3G channel.

Gatot said that the Ministry will provide the same frequency for this new channel as the previous one. Now block 11 and 12 are ready to be released. He stated that mobile subscribers will enjoy better quality connections as a result.

The bandwidth is getting wider, and this will improve things significantly. This frequency channel will be established side-by-side to fulfill public expectancy.

From a consumer point of view, this will certainly be welcome news if it means that 3G services indeed experience this kind of noticeable upgrade.

Indonesian telecommunications provider Indosat is extending its promotional bonus program called “Program 3 hari 3 malam lanjuut” which means ‘3 days 3 nights continues,’ up until October 24 [1]. The program gives its subscribers bonuses on voice, SMS, and internet services based on credit top-ups usage. Additionally, Detik cites Erik Meijer, the director and chief commercial officer of Indosat yesterday as he shared the telco’s stats:

• 20 percent of Indosat users belong to the smartphone category, while the rest of 80 percent belong to the feature phone category. This data supports Andy Zain’s data regarding feature phone market percentage in Indonesia a few days ago.

• Indosat has a total of 50.9 million users, and 25 percent of them subscribe to the bonus program.

• Indosat has given out around 2 billion minutes of phone calling, 1 billion SMSes, and around 33 million Mbps for internet services via the bonus program.

• There was a 10 percent increase on credit top-ups usage during the bonus program implementation in the Ramadan month.

• Compared to last year’s Lebaran holiday [2], Indosat achieved an increase on all its three services: data (59.97 percent), voice call and SMS (25 percent).

You can see more details on the extended bonus program here.

[Source: Detik, picture: Chip.co.id]

Indonesian telecommunications providers XL and Indosat have released figures on their services’ traffic during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, this according to Detik today. XL users seem to prefer using the internet or BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) over traditional phone calls and text messages (SMS) when sending holiday greetings. While Indosat’s traffic saw an increase across all its services, with data services representing the biggest growth. Here are some highlights:

XL

XL’s report showed an increase on phone call and data traffic services during the Eid al-Fitr holiday (August 19 [1]) with 4.5 percent and 19.0 percent increases respectively. XL’s SMS traffic had a surprising decline of 14.0 percent. Detik cites the president director of XL Axiata, Hasnul Suhaimi as saying yesterday, “This [trend] is in line with the increasing data usage trend such as BBM, Facebook, Twitter, or other social networking websites.”

Indosat

The report shows that compared to the June data, Indosat traffic gained an increase on all its three services during the Eid al-Fitr holiday, with voice, SMS, and data services accounting for 13.9 percent, 32.0 percent, and 26.9 percent respectively. In comparison to the Eid al-Fitr holiday report last year, the voice traffic declined by 5.8 percent. The other two traffic services, SMS and data, had good growth, with an increase of 14.0 percent and a whopping 68.1 percent respectively.

Here are some charts below to help illustrate the telecommunication usage growth in Eid al-Fitr compared to the normal days:

[Sources: Detik #1 and #2, picture: ljhookermandurah.wordpress.com]

Japanese online service provider Excite recently launched its advertising-based points program called Excite Points, claiming to be the first of its kind user reward system in Indonesia. We talked to Nobu Kiyohara, the manager of Excite business development group [1], about the company’s expansion plans in the country.

We understand that in the last year, Excite Japan has started to look to expansion into other Asian countries, notably Taiwan and Indonesia, with the Philippines next in sight. In Taiwan, Excite has invested in two companies: e-commerce platform PCHome, and women-oriented review site Fashion Guide. Nobu added that they also tried to expand to China, but it was hard for them to identify the right market there. Should its points system prove successful in Indonesia, Excite plans to bring it to the Philippines next.

So how do Excite Points work? As shown in the above graphic, users login to the website and earn points through online activities, such as clicking a banner, subscribing to Groupon, getting a quote from an insurance company, or making purchases. Basically, it’s gamification. The points can then be redeemed for prizes at the Excite Points website.

At the moment, the program is still in the testing phase, and so the redemption options are only in the form of SmartFren phone credit top-ups. To provide more redemption options, Excite is looking to partner with Indonesian telcos Telkomsel and Indosat in the next couple of months. Excite also plans to add other products such as gadgets and more merchant’s products in the future.

The points are funded by the advertisers, or whoever sets the online activity. The company will pay Excite based on CPA (Click per Acquisition) according to what the advertisers want, like sending a quote on new auto insurance, for example. Excite explains that the CPA method offered by the program makes more sense than the usual CPC (Cost per Click). This is because the latter doesn’t guarantee that users complete the advertiser’s target activity even when they have seen and clicked on the ads, as explained on the following slide:

Nobu claims that Excite Points advertisements are better than Google Adsense and Adwords in acquiring potential customers. Google can help you acquire customers, he says, who are already interested in the product, according to user search keywords and content. While Excite Points can help acquire potential customers who might not even know about the product. The points program can introduce products to new customers who are actively seeking to earn points on the website. Of course, I’d personally say that each method has its own strengths and weaknesses.

On the Indonesian Market and Foreseeable Problems

Right now, Excite is looking to expand aggressively into the Indonesian market with its points system in terms of users, but especially advertisers. Nobu added:

Honestly speaking, the advertisement market is still small in Indonesia. I believe it’s 6 billion ad dollars including TV, traditional media, and online media. Online media consists of about only one to two percent of the whole market, but it’s growing. We are anxious to go into this market and become a game changer.

Nobu revealed that in Japan the 15-year-old points-based business system has encountered problems with “point hunters.” These are certain users who only look to get points without giving any real tangible benefits to the advertisers. A lot of point hunters even go to the extent of making multiple accounts to get the points. Should that happen, Excite already has the technology to maximize the system’s effectiveness. One such example is that Excite can submit a weekly report regarding user CPA, and then the advertisers can approve or disapprove the users regarding the point rewards. This is already implemented right now.

Whereas many other Japanese companies tend to go by themselves into new markets, Excite sees partnerships with the local major conglomerate Sinar Mas Group as its strength and differentiator here in the country. Nobu believes that together with the partner’s local knowledge and Excite know-how, they can execute and deliver the products well.

Excite doesn’t have an entity yet in Indonesia, and the team consists of four to five people located in SmartFren’s office at the moment. Nobu explained that one of the reasons why Excite chose to partner up with the carrier is because the company has data and access on active PC internet users in the country. Excite has also partnered up with mobile CPA network giant Adways Indonesia, and that should help them in the market as well.

ARTX 2012 is the “first augmented reality event” in Asia – so claims the organizer Augmented Reality & Co (AR & Co). The event was held on June 15 and 16, and featured exhibitions, seminars, and an augmented reality competition. The promos for it sounded fun, so I dropped in. It saw 1,500 in attendance, and was held at Bina Nusantara university in partnership with Kibar Kreasi and Kompas.

The exhibition itself showcased some of the best usage of augmented reality technology by brands in Indonesia. We had Indosat, Djarum, Telkom, Disney, Qualcomm, LG, Kino Toys, Dancow, Lee Cooper, Kompas, and Nissan. In total there were 16 exhibitors. Managing director of AR & Co, Peter Shearer, explained more:

As a digital industry player, we want to help educate the people about the development of augmented reality technology in Indonesia and its usage in more than just one sector. AR&Co, as a pioneer of augmented reality development in Indonesia, is proud to be able to showcase and hold this event. This shows that Indonesia’s products can compete with anyone’s out there and we hope that more are coming – especially from students.

As for the seminar, they had Michael Budi (CEO of AR & Co.), the afore-mentioned Peter Shearer, Ignatius Hardanto Subagyo (business director at Kompas), and Yasha Chatab (business development director at WIR). All were talking about augmented reality implementation and its future prospects in Indonesia. ARTX also held a competition to develop augmented reality apps both on mobile and PC for high school students and university students.

There haven’t been many startups developing augmented reality technology in Indonesia. One notable one might be Cherrypicks, which has a subsidiary company in Indonesia. It has really nice products and a number of clients already. I would definitely love to see more augmented reality implementation, especially coming from our own local startups.

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:

1. RIM should build a server plant here to localize data traffic in Indonesia, so that latency will decrease, and service costs can be reduced.
2. RIM should provide monitoring tools to monitor its performance so as to minimize customer complaints if and when critical problems occur.
3. RIM should devise a transparent “Service Level Agreement,” so that RIM’s standard service quality is clear to evaluate.
4. RIM should improve its handset terminal performance.
5. 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?

ON A TRAIN!

Good news for Indonesian travelers! Indosat Mega Media (IM2) recently began cooperating with PT Kereta Api Indonesia (KAI or Indonesian Railway Company) to provide Wi-Fi service for train passengers. For the first stage, the network coverage will be available at seven train stations and aboard 82 executive cars in Java.

Interestingly, IM2 provides two Service Set Identifiers (SSID) for the service and one of them is free of charge. If users only need internet access for browsing, they can use the IM2-KAI SSID, which is free. But the company doesn’t allow downloading and video or audio streaming through this free service. The other SSID, INDOSATNet, is a paid service which cost users Rp0.5/Mb (approximately US$0.00005/Mb) for access. IM2 considers this a premium service with download and streaming features available for users.

The Wi-Fi service is a breakthrough in Indonesian mass transportation services, and especially for trains. For the last few years, trains have lost many passengers as many people turn to cars, motorcycles and aeroplanes to travel. Both IM2 and KAI hope the service will attract people back to travel by rail. As Sulistyo Wimbo Hardjito, CCO of KAI says:

Hopefully, the service will increase KAI’s competitiveness as a public transportation service provider in the country.

Indar Atmanto, CEO of IM2 has the same expectation, saying:

We hope the service will drive people to travel by train as well as providing access for IM2 broadband customers.

For the time being, the service will be available in seven main train stations; Gambir (Jakarta), Bandung, Semarang Tawang, Yogyakarta, Solo Balapan, Surabaya Turi, and Surabaya Gubeng. Executive car passengers along the route can also enjoy the Wi-Fi service on the train.

The service is a good development for internet service in the country. We reported about how Telkomsel is ensuring its network coverage on boats earlier, which is also a great development in mobile internet service. And as internet users in Indonesia are still growing with half going online via mobile, these services will be an interesting treat for netizens.

[Lead photo source: esq-news.com and Green Eggs and Ham]

Indonesian telcos are now getting busy implementing 4G technology. Bakrie acquired a local 4G operator last week, and now Indosat is partnering with ZTE Indonesia to test its own speedier LTE network.

The trial started today in a new laboratory at the Bandung Institute of Technology’s (ITB). Indosat has built a special Indosat Innovation Lab at ITB for its research and hardware development. In the LTE demonstration this afternoon, the company managed to achieve a maximum download data speed of 107 Mbps – that would make for some very smooth and quick streaming and gaming. During this trial run, Fadzri Sentosa, infrastructure director at Indosat, explained to Detik:

This LTE trial is a manifestation of our readiness to adopt this evolving technology, and to provide an LTE service for the community. It all begins with this laboratory.

There’s still a lot of work to do – Indosat and ZTE will also undertake more development, training, and market research to lay out a 4G data network across the country.

As Indonesia is still struggling for better Internet connection speeds, this LTE trial is a promising step towards reaching a decent speed just like other Asian countries in the future.

Ramadan will be here in less than a week. The holy month for Muslims is also a sort of celebration for telco companies in Indonesia. Most of big players offer special services and programs during the fasting month, aiming to win customer loyalty and, with any luck, more revenue.

Telkomsel, Indosat, XL, Axis and Bakrie Telecom (Esia) have all prepared their network capability to handle the traffic increase. XL is reportedly adding 100 base transceiver stations (BTS) to anticipate the congestion during Ramadan and Eid. Meanwhile Telkomsel plans to operate 200 mobile BTS in several areas to ensure its network reliability.

Most operators provide various religious content during Ramadan to accomodate users’ need for data service. Users can access this content by using a command service code from the operator. For example, Indosat customers only need to dial *123# and Axis customers can dial *789# to get Ramadan content. Although it’s not as high-tech as most mobile internet content, this simple and user-friendly procedure is very popular among Indonesians.

Even though data services continue to grow, customers still find voice and short message service (SMS) very convenient. Axis seems very enthusiastic to grab this opportunity by launching a free-of-charge voice calls and SMS promotion from midnight to 6am. One such TV commercial for promo can be seen here:

Interestingly, the SMS message is the star of this annual celebration. Telkomsel recorded 809 million SMS messages sent at the end of Ramadan last year. Outside Ramadan, the company’s message traffic peaked at 727 million SMSs sent. Indosat also claimed its SMS traffic reached 532 million messages, increasing significantly compared with ordinary days traffic where it sees only 375 million. The same phenomena happens across all operators as Muslims send Eid Mubarak greetings to families, friends, and relatives.

More Revenue?

Despite the traffic surge during Ramadan and especially during Eid, there’s no guarantee of increased revenue. As reported by Indonesia Finance Today, operators’ revenue can fluctuate from time to time.

Even so, excitement and optimism still surrounds all operators as Indonesians utilize mobile phones during Ramadan. From sending SMS, calling friends or family, to browsing from a mobile phone — all have become a powerful way to forget hunger and thirst during the day. But whether operators’ revenue will increase or not, it’s not for us to say. We’ll have to wait and see when after the celebration is over.

Facebook started as a small start-up in Palo Alto and Olivan says that only he has the unique ‘accent’ to spread Facebook worldwide. He said that Facebook has more than 750 million active users, or folks who log in at least once a month.

“Indonesia is a very social place and Facebook growth here has been impressive.”

“Oh, we have still some work to do here,” said Olivan. Crowd laughs.

“We don’t want a mixture of language. We want full, for example, full Spanish, full Chinese sites. To gain speed, we let users to do the translation.”

Olivan’s goes back to discussing Facebook pages, reiterating and emphasizing the importance for businesses to have one. “It’s free and you can register it at our page, here.”

Q&A

With so many users here, when will Facebook open an office here in Indonesia? #

“We have no official plans to open an office in Indonesia. But we have been building offices around the globe in London, Ireland, Sao Paulo, Singapore… Indonesia has tens of millions of users but in terms of proportion, it is still very early to have an office here”

Olivan says that he would love to come back here more often because this is a great place to test features and the growth is amazing.

A persistent audience member asked about the specific timeline for a Facebook office in Indonesia, and also what he thinks about Google+ #

“I really don’t have a specific timeline to share, if I had, I would,” replied Olivan.

“We really respect Google as a company, it’s a very innovative company. The world is getting more social and we’ll be focusing on building our own product.”

To fill in the school holidays, telecommunications company Indosat is holding the IM3 Mobile Academy 2011 program to seek out the brightest and most talented teenagers throughout Indonesia. In auditions in 30 locations across the nation since May, 150 high school students have been selected to attend the Mobile Academy camp for five days.

“Through this event,” explains Devimaz Gusmal, Division Head of Brand Maintenance at Indosat, “participants can self-learn, sharpen their talents, and develop their hobbies into something ‘profitable’ through online media.”

For five days the Mobile Academy participants will be guided in sharpening their skills and talents. They are encouraged to develop their hobbies and interests to devise creative concepts for potential online entrepreneurs. They will also participate in various workshops, fun games, and meet with Indonesian public figures and celebrities. At the final event, the participant judged to have the most potential will win the mantle of an Ambassador for IM3 in their respective regions, and with that will get scholarships, cash, fully-paid holiday packages, and a few of the latest gadgets.

Twitter Battle

Each participant is also encouraged to use Twitter to share their camp experiences with the hashtag #im3academy. The committee will select the most interesting tweets, also taking into account the number of tweets and followers that the participant has. The winner will be the ‘Young Nonstop Online Stars King & Queen,’ winning BlackBerry devices and a free vacation to Singapore as bonus prizes.

This IM3 program has proven a successful and popular event since it was first held in 2008. This year is the fourth Mobile Academy, and the number of participants is growing annually. Recently Telkom also held an entrepreneurship coaching program, so it’s promising to see this trend in youth-oriented events continue. The Indonesian start-up world should have a bright future if these initiatives to foster growing talents keep coming.

via Chip

Indonesian telco, Indosat has formed a partnership with ADVA AG Optical Networking to provide faster and more secure online for banking transactions using an optical transport solution.

ADVA will provide ‘FSP 3000′ datacenter connection solutions that deliver high-capacity Dense Wavelength Division Multiplexing (DWDM) core network connectivity. This solution enables Indosat customers to have a smoother online banking experience

“The FSP 3000 provides unmatched scalability, flexibility, security, and reliability. For enterprises, that translates into valuable business benefits such as avoiding application downtime, avoiding data loss and achieving operational efficiencies,” Erik Lindberg, ADVA Optical Networking’s vice president of sales for Asia-Pacific said in a statement.

I contacted Eddy Arianjani, the operational project manager of PT. Kaliaren Jaya and he told us that ADVA has the most reliable devices in the market. To back up his claim, Arianjani pointed to the various clients ADVA is currently serving, including HP, IBM, and NEC.

Competing with other telcos in Indonesia, Indosat is beginning to intensify its data banking connectivity services, and enlisting ADVA as a business partner is a good start.

Recently competitor XL also improved its service by bringing in partner Teradata to help with data warehousing.

The growth of online commerce in Indonesia is also an important consideration for Indosat to provide a faster and more secure connection for banking services, along with the growing opportunities for social commerce in the country.

Indonesian telecommunication company Indosat recently announced its annual event Indosat Wireless Innovation Contest (IWIC) 2011. This year’s contest features the theme “Wireless Application Innovation to Create Entrepeneurship.”

The contest comprises of mobile application development namely on Android and BlackBerry platforms. Developers can choose to develop mobile applications for business or entertainment uses.

Every mobile application developed must be original and be submitted to IWIC committee before October 2011. If elected as winners, the work will be commercialized by Indosat or offered to other parties according to subsequent negotiations. In addition, Indosat also offered a variety of rewards including gadgets and a thousand dollars in cash.

Indosat provides a place for people to get actively involved Indonesia’s mobile app development scene. It’s especially relevant in Indonesia where various start-ups are getting off the ground and contributing to the advancement of technology in the country.

This kind of contest is certainly a positive initiative for young people and encourages them to become effective entrepreneurs.

Technology market research firm ABI reported that Indonesia and the UK have the lowest mobile broadband pricing plans compared to most other Asian, European, and American countries. In general, telecommunications companies in Asia do have low prices, primarily because of the government interference in controlling the price in response to fierce competition among the telcos.

Indosat, an Indonesian telco, promotes unlimited data on StarOne packages for $5 to $14. Other rival telcos such as XL Axiata and Telkomsel have offered similarly priced packages. Meanwhile in the UK, T-Mobile is promoting its Mobile Broadband Plus plan for US$ 15.47. For other telcos, many of them implement per-hour or per-packet plans.

Affordable pricing is driven primarily by increasing demand for mobile data services in line with rapid development of mobile industry. In our interview with Singapore technology expert, Alfred Siew on the rise of the mobile industry in Southeast Asia, he said:

In Indonesia, for example, BlackBerry is huge because users who love to message each other rely on the BlackBerry messaging system and telcos’ low-cost data plans to chat all day. Singapore, meanwhile, is quite similar to European cities in usage. While in Philippines, messaging is one of the hottest mobile apps.

Unfortunately, affordable pricing cannot fully compensate for the quality of broadband networks in Indonesia. Unlike other countries in Asia, Indonesia’s network is still improving, so for the moment, people still need to pay a little more to get the maximum service.