Telkomsel, the Irony
Saturday, June 12, 2010
Telkomsel proved to the Indonesian market today that they are probably the greatest irony that ever happened in the country. Here are the facts on why I came to this conclusion:
- Telkomsel is the largest cellular provider in this country, and with the widest coverage.
- Telkomsel is Apple’s exclusive partner that sells bundled iPhones in this country.
- As far as I know, the iPad 3G is the only device available right now (including here, despite it’s not officially imported) that uses a micro SIM.
So given those facts, Telkomsel should be able to steal the competition by supplying micro SIMs for Indonesian iPad 3G owners, right? No. We have to cut them ourselves instead, AND, instead of them, XL is pioneering the move. Ironic? Yes. But then again, Telkomsel’s 3G coverage (or stability) is not entirely that spectacular anyway.
Now, let’s see how long would it take for them to bring the iPhone 4 here, and how long would it take for them to sell them appropriately or competitively. But the way I see it, Apple should’ve ditched the partnership from the beginning and sell factory-unlocked iPhones through Indonesian authorized resellers instead. I’m pretty sure that this would work better in terms of sales.
So maybe, by the time the iPhone 4 is here, and we ask Telkomsel on whether we can get an official micro SIM card or not, this is the reply that you would probably get: “Mohon informasikan nomor telepon dan lokasi, tim kami yang akan menindaklanjuti.”
Sorry, just had to let that out :)
True, I want to buy a brand new iPhone 4 from US, but hence the fact that I this micro SIM thing is a little disappointing to me.
Telkomsel is the biggest alright, but they also the most sluggish telco player in Indonesia. ah screw it! I’m gonna switch to XL anyway
is it true satelindo will be the provider for iphone4 ? they might do the data traffic better :s
Just read at DetikNet, the XL microSIM will be available only for data communication, no voice or SMS capability. So, it’s for iPad only (at least, for now) and not for iPhone4.
A little bird whispering to me that T-sel will soon (this year) provide iPad 3G… no info on iPhone 4.
It’s a bit strange that no one offer iPhone 4 yet.. I remember that only a couple of days after iPad was launched, we can find them here…
@diego:
Don’t know yet. Up to this point, we still don’t know whether the iPhone 4 is going to be Telkomsel-exclusive or not. Hopefully, it’s not. The others may be able to sell it better than those dumbasses.
@Spock:
Maybe Apple is rethinking the not-so-successful-thanks-to-who retail of iPhones here. Let’s hope that it’s here this year.
I also planning to buy iphone 4 from england this week, but unfortunately when i’m ask the call center of telkomsel, they said that the micro sim for iphone is not already for now…and there still no further information about that
ohhh com’on very disappointing…so we have iphone 4 but useless in Indonesia…
please give the information about this..
@dee:
This is a tough call, really. Not only that Telkomsel is an idiot, they’re always the latest in terms of getting information in just about anything. Not the best solution, but the only thing we can do right now is to cut the SIM cards ourselves. It works, though.