Recently, I’ve been frustrated a lot with the Telkomsel network. And I don’t think I’m alone.
Let’s start with voice calls. Even in the cities, with good coverage, it is more than difficult to actually reach someone, even in the same city. And even after you finally get through, the connection is usually quite bad, and calls are dropped frequently. In more remote locations, people have taken to sending text messages because of this, a recourse that works also in the cities.
Unless there’s problems with the SMS as well. Often SMS take hours, sometimes even more than a day to be delivered, and sometimes fail to be delivered (we’re talking about intra-island SMS here, SMS to international numbers are even more haphazard), and I’ve had to reschedule meetings because the person I was supposed to meet with didn’t get my message or they didn’t mine…
And finally the data plans. While the volume based simPATI flash plan has been mostly okay when accessed from my cell phone, it usually slows down to a trickle after a short while when accessed through a wireless modem. And the kartuHALO “unlimited” plan has not been working at all. I’m told though that this is an Indonesia-wide problem Telkomsel has not been able to fix so far.
There’s no official Telkomsel branch (called graPARI) on Flores, the nearest one being in Kupang. At the beginning of the month, a number of frustrated customers already staged a protest there. A spokesman apologized and said Telkomsel was working on it, but apparently there hasn’t been much improvement until now. On Flores, there’s only franchise offices, which are called geraiHALO, in three locations, Ruteng, Ende and Maumere. Since they are perceived to be officially representing Telkomsel on the island, they have born the brunt of the criticism of irate customers here, perhaps a little bit unfairly so.
It seems like Telkomsel is putting too much money into advertising and not enough into the infrastructure, which has trouble keeping up with the increase of customers that huge amount of advertising generates. I have to confess, every time I see a Telkomsel ad on TV, I get angry at the corporate leadership for pouring all that money into promoting their services rather than upgrading their infrastructure. Of course, customers will not be compensated for the time they couldn’t use the service, anything different would be unheard of in Indonesia.
Unfortunately, the competition is not much better. There is only one other cell phone provider in Flores, Indosat, and they are only present in the cities, but not in the countryside. And where I’ve tried them on Flores, they’re only marginally better…
PS:
as a PSA, the addresses of the three geraiHALO offices:
Ende JL. Nanas No.6, Ende, NTT Maumere Jl. Anggrek No.4, Sikka, Maumere, NTT Ruteng Jl. Kartini No.2 , Lawir Manggarai, Ruteng
And if you need to complain to the bigwigs, go to the graPARI in Kupang, or straight to the regional HQ in Denpasar:
Denpasar Jl.Diponegoro 134, Denpasar 80114 Kupang Jl. W.J. Lalamentik No. 88 Kel.Oebufu, Kupang 85111
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