Indosat 3.5G

Finally mobile internet competition gets hotter. A while ago Indosat launched new program Indosat 3.5G to compete with existing competitor: Telkomsel 3G, Telkom Flash HSPDA, and Pro XL 3.5G.

Interesting news is they offer cheapest data rate for retail customers, Rp 1/KB and Rp 100 / minute for time-based service (time-based only apply to Mentari and IM3 users). It is much cheaper than Telkomnet Instan! Although they said that this was promo rate, but I believed that it could be extended to keep existing customer from moving to XL, because 4 months ago XL launched Mega Data Package (1GB = Rp 99,000).

Time-based Rp 100/minute rate is as cheap as Esia CDMA rate. Meanwhile Fren offers Rp 160/minute via ISP partners, Telkom Flash Rp 350/minute, and XL doesn't have such offer.

Indosat still far behind in package budling, they only offer 1GB=Rp 130,000 but you have to switch to new card and new number with 0814 prefix. Quite confusing since they offer 2 product: Indosat 3.5G Matrix (0815,0816) and Indosat 3.5G Broadband (0814). Matrix package is very expensive: 50MB for Rp100,000. Why aren't existing customers given facilities to subscribe to such package? Only they can answer this questions since their own Customer Service couldn't give explanation.

You can read this article translation in Indonesian at Teknolagi.