Idul Fitri sees behavioral shift in consumer communications

Jakarta, NU Online
Just as she did last year, 20-year-old Teta Fathiyah relied on her cell phone rather than greeting cards to save costs while touching base during the Idul Fitri holidays.

The costs saved became more apparent for her this year as she used mobile Internet services that recently became more widely available for cell phone users. Instead of relying solely on the traditional SMS, she broadcast more greetings through Yahoo Messenger, Facebook and Twitter.<>

"It's a lot cheaper to use mobile Internet services," she said, an opinion widely shared by millions of Indonesians who recently changed their communications habits due to greater mobile Internet access.

Adita Irawati, spokeswoman for PT Indosat, the country's second-biggest mobile telecommunications provider, said Internet messaging services and social networking sites had a direct impact on SMS use during the holidays.

She said although SMS traffic had increased by 46.1 percent to 377.9 million messages on the first day of Idul Fitri, the increase was considered insignificant compared to what the company had recorded last year.

"We had a more than 100 percent increase on Idul Fitri last year," she was quoted by The Jakarta Post as saying.

Data from Indosat shows that data traffic through its mobile Internet services was up by 6.7 percent, to 17.5 terabytes, on the first day of the Idul Fitri holidays, compared to a normal day in September.

PT Excelcomindo Pratama (XL), the country's third-largest mobile telecommunications provider, also saw similar trends, with data traffic soaring by 328 percent to 2.44 terabytes during this year's Idul Fitri, compared to the same day last year.

XL spokeswoman Febriati Nadira said Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo Messenger were the most popular media used to greet family and friends during the holidays, and their use was expected to increase significantly in the coming years.

Data from the Indonesian Telecommunications Regulatory Agency (BRTI) shows that data traffic from all telecommunications providers during the Idul Fitri holidays had increased by 10 percent compared to the average traffic during normal office hours in September.

BRTI official Heru Sutadi said the rising trend in mobile Internet access was riding a wave of popularity with the introduction of smartphones such as the BlackBerry from Research in Motion, and the iPhone from Apple.

He said there were at present 400,000 BlackBerry users in Indonesia, which he called a remarkable achievement considering the brand's relatively late entry into the market.

Indosat has 140,000 BlackBerry users out of its 28.9 million customers, while XL has 150,000 Blackberry users out of its 24.7 million customers.

Heru said mobile access to Internet services would continue to see formidable growth for more years to come as smartphones became more affordable.

"Despite being tagged at a premium price of Rp 6 million, smartphones like the BlackBerry are already seeing significant sales growth," he said. (dar)