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3GS

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Telkomsel Priority and Corporate customers get raw end of iPhone deal

Surprising news from iBox at Plaza Indonesia today when several acquaintances went in to buy Telkomsel's iPhone 3GS. Being long term corporate customers (10+ years) they expected to be able to purchase iPhone 3GS on the more affordable package plans.

Apparently it doesn't work that way. Priority customers have to wait until February 25, while Corporate customers may have to wait longer according to this printed email from Lucky Kurniawan, Regional Account Manager for Telkomsel. iBox employees were equally dumbfounded. They weren't informed until today about it. Turns out Priority means something else to the country's largest mobile provider.

According to iBox staff, around 15 people up until that time have left the store disappointed at not being able to buy the phones with the bundled postpaid plans. Neither the press release nor the marketing material mention anything about post paid subscribers having to wait at least until February 25.

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Filed under  //  3gs   indonesia   iphone   telkomsel  
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Posted 5 months ago by Aulia Masna 

New Telkomsel iPhone website is live

   
Click here to download:
New_Telkomsel_iPhone_website_i.zip (276 KB)

Just a quick heads up, yesterday my colleague Amir posted a tidbit about the new Telkomsel iPhone website which apparently was leaked early. Within a few hours it was pulled and kept secure under lock and key, well, not literally, but you needed a username and password to reach it. No doubt it was not meant to be launched yet. This morning, that website is again live.

The site is reminiscent of Apple's own website in terms of looks except it's in Telkomsel's corporate colors and a greatly improved version over the one created for iPhone 3G.

If you can excuse the poor English used across the site, it's actually full of useful information that's easy to find. Unfortunately a few information contained in the website are inaccurate or misspelled (like 3Gs for 3GS) but most of those are trivial and will not affect purchase decisions.

The inclusion of a forum would be beneficial for those who rely on Telkomsel for information on iPhone because apparently their customer service officers who deal with support issues over the phone often have no clue about the iPhone. As with anything though, it will depend on who will use the forum and how.

[update]
As pointed out by Mark Hanusz, the new website is in English and there doesn't seem to be an option to switch the language to Indonesian like on the old site.

Oh and another thing, to register on the website you will need to declare your religion (yes, seriously), your interests and disclose your iPhone's IMEI. All fields are required. No word if a valid Telkomsel iPhone 3G or 3GS IMEI will be cross checked with their database or used for what purpose.

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Filed under  //  3gs   iphone   telkomsel   website  
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Posted 5 months ago by Aulia Masna 

Telkomsel iPhone 3GS gets a release date?


Late last month we saw OKEshop outlets sporting actual iPhone 3GS banners at their shops and just today, we received word from id-mac mailing list that a customer service officer at Grapari in Bandung claims that Telkomsel will finally release iPhone 3GS on January 20, 2010. Grapari is of course Telkomsel's official retail and customer service outlet.

With two weeks ahead of the supposed launch date, there is still no official word or press release about the launch although the signs are pointing there. There is currently no word about pricing or packaged plans either. Unlike the big hype surrounding the albeit late iPhone 3G launch last March, the buzz around the 3GS in Indonesia is almost nonexistent. 

Telkomsel had been pushing the 8GB and 16GB 3G iPhones out the door since September by selling them for practically at cost and while it still is not enough to meet the company's supposed target of 220 thousand units, looks like they've managed to push out enough units to finally sell the 3GS.

The pre-order page for the 3GS has been around since September although the company had only been publicly sending notices about it early in December.

Buried under the hype of BlackBerrys and Nexians, Telkomsel seemed to resign to the fact that people weren't going to flock to buy their iPhones in droves. Those who were really enthusiastic about Apple's smartphone chose to go the private import way. They bought iPhone 3GS from countries such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia where they can buy them unlocked for around the same price as a local iPhone 3G.

Hopefully with an additional two month lead time compared to their previous effort, along with nine months of experience, Telkomsel has figured out a way to avoid the disastrous 2009 campaign and start marketing iPhone 3GS properly.

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Filed under  //  3GS   apple   indonesia   iphone   iphone 3GS   telkomsel  
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Posted 6 months ago by Aulia Masna