SURABAYA, Indonesia-Indosat-M3 (IM3), the pioneer of General Packet Radio Service (GPRS) services in Indonesia, has encountered a 90-percent drop in GPRS traffic after beginning fees for the service.
I Made Harta Wijaya, IM3’s general manager of product development, said the drop followed IM3’s decision to start charging for GPRS services at 0.20 rupiahs (US$0.0023) per kilobyte last October. While it offered free services, IM3 counted more than 340 Gigabytes of data had been accessed through GPRS services.
Indonesia’s other GPRS operator, Telkomsel, which launched GPRS services last October, has not disclosed its GPRS traffic.
On a positive note, IM3 said its non-voice services have contributed roughly 20 to 25 percent of its revenue, which is more than most mobile operators in the country that have an average 10 to 15 percent of non-voice revenue contributions.
Regarding GPRS development, Rudiantara, the country’s head of the Cellular Association as well as director of Excelcomindo, the third-largest cellular operator, said voice is still the killer application for mobile operators. He said instead of building GPRS infrastructure, he would improve short message service (SMS)-based services. Currently, Excelcomindo promotes its SMS-based value-added services, named Mobile Fun, ranging from games to location-based services.
