BELLAMYBUDIMAN

Last night, I stumbled upon Telkomsel’s website because I want to sign up for their electronic billing statement service (A service which signup link has yet to be found until now). I was already on my bed, and decided, hey, why don’t I just open the website from my iPhone and sign up from there. After all, Telkomsel is the exclusive provider for the iPhone, so they had to have a good mobile version of their website, right? Right? Right?

No.

Because here’s what showed up in my mobile Safari:

It is probably, by far, the ugliest mobile website I’ve ever seen from a mobile provider. It is badly designed (look at those jagged rounded corners of the icons), badly developed, and it doesn’t even give you any information other than referring you to mostly outdated apps in the App Store. Not to mention that most of those apps are not good looking either.

It also doesn’t give you the option to switch to the regular website, it needs you to explicitly enter “http://www.telkomsel.com/web/home” in the browser (luckily I bookmarked that one) so that it will give you this:

By the way, that screenshot was taken on a Mac, so in the iPhone, the main feature slideshow as you see there is not available, because it’s using Flash (while it’s easier to do that with jQuery, but hey, they’re technologically advanced people, right?).

But this is not the website’s feature that I want to talk about. If you look at the lower right section of the website, you’ll see a customer login. Everything there seems to be right (despite the ugliness of the website’s design). But when you look closer, you’ll get this:

People, if you ever want to forget your Telkomsel login password for any reason at all, then worry no more! Telkomsel has that feature made for you.

PS: If someone can point me on how to signup for the electronic billing statement, it would be much appreciated. It seems that talking with their jackass customer service won’t do much good.

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 :)

Here are some quotes of them during the iPhone launch by Telkomsel yesterday at Pacific Place.

Indra Bekti said:

“Selain buat video call sama pacarku yang sedang kuliah di Malaysia, aku juga sering baca detikcom, lho, lewat 3G.”

From detikInet.

Yes, Indra Bekti, you can always do a Video Call with an iPhone using this technique:

Yes, I know it’s inconvenient, but you seemed to be excited about it.

Dhini Aminarti said:

“Beli iPhone 3G biar keren aja. Hehe, ini bukan handphone biasa lho, ini iPhone,”

From

Could this mean that the wait is almost over? When I woke up this morning, a lot of things has been going on around. Several things for sure are of the following:

• Telkomsel is now accepting limited pre-orders for the iPhone 3G. Supposedly, you can find more information on it at www.telkomsel.com/iphone/. But the site is experiencing a very slow load since this morning, at least. Everybody’s probably going there right now. I just got the chance to pre-order after five reloads.
• You can also pre-order the phone by dialing 111 from your Telkomsel number. Thanks to Yona for this info.
• Aulia Masna posted on his tech blog that Telkomsel’s External Corporate Communications confirmed that they will be bringing the iPhone 3G here.
• Indonesia is now listed in the country list at www.apple.com/iphone/countries/. This is confusing, since it’s suddenly there. While Thailand, who confirmed the iPhone first for their country is still listed under “Coming Soon”.

However, Telkomsel have not released any word on pricing or availability. Rumors said that it will be released on February 25. So, I guess we’ll just see in a month. But in any case, this is a very good news today, unless, of course, if suddenly they decided the price to be IDR 10.000.000.