Esia changes SMS Plan, now Rp 1/character

Starting today (15-May-08) CDMA Celullar provider Esia launches new campaign for its SMS Plan. This is the first in Indonesia, and I believe also the first at least in South East Asia.

Usually SMS or text message tariff is charged per message sending, but now Esia charges you in character basis, which is Rp 1/character, no matter recipient's operator. Let's say you sms friend 'r u bz?', then this 7 characters sending will cost only Rp 7,-. Very cheap right?

For those who love abbreviation, this is a saving. But when sending a full sms (an sms can contain max. 160character), it is quite expensive since overall sms sending cost in other GSM/CDMA operators now only Rp 100/sms. But I can tell that most of people's sms only contain less than 50 characters, based on my experience when receive other's sms.

At last, as most Esia users know, failure rate in sending sms using Esia is a bit high. So this time Esia has to convince users: is it reliable?