Pulsa Pulsa Pulsa!

[Joko]

/begin rant/

I've been here in Manado for ten days now, and I think I'm finally starting to understand how to pay for data on my phone. It's a lot more confusing than it needs to be, if you ask me.

First off, you've got all these different kinds of FLASH. There's regular FLASH. And then there's local FLASH. And 4G Flash. And midnite FLASH. I check the kuota on my data, and I get 4 different numbers! It's ridiculous.

Then there's buying it. As I'm only here for 3 weeks, I've been buying weekly packages. When I got here, I bought a 3GB 4G Flash packet for 100rb, and it's pretty much all still there because the only place you can get 4G is in the heart of Manado. I did get a little 4G signal in parts of Kotamobagu and Tomohon, but not much. Everywhere else, it's regular FLASH. And I can only buy 300MB (with 300MB bonus midnite data usable when I'm asleep) at a time. I probably use more data in a week than the average Indonesian does in a month, so when this current quote of regular FLASH... or is it local FLASH? I dunno... but when it runs out, likely tonight, I'll look at a monthly package.

Then there's how much PULSA you can buy at any one time. "I'd like 100rb in Pulsa..." "Maaf, pak, I can only sell you 50rb"... "Well, then sell me 50rb twice." "Ah, okay, pak"...

/end rant/

The phone data system here is so screwy, it'll drive man to narkoba.

 

[jstar]

.
The concept can be very confusing. You're supposed to top up and add money to your pre-paid account, but after that it is important to move the funds you added to an Internet solution/package/promo/.... The remainder then is used for telephone and SMS etc.

If you forget to 'move' that money and don't buy an option, you will pay a huge amount per Kb/Mb and your pulsa will run out very fast!

I had that a couple of times in my BlackBerry 'period'; the Internet package was not activated so my 100.000 rupiah lasted two days or so. Now with Telkomsel etc. you have acceptable 4G/LTE packages for 85-125K, valid for 30 days.

 

[R Cameron]

Yes, you definitely have to read the details. Telkomsel also has several packages that give you several GBs of data for certain obscure video apps (which they presumably own?), and that number is added into the headline number. A 20GB monthly package is likely to be something like 12gb for their special video app, 5gb 4G, and only 3gb of universal data.

I've found the Telkomsel app more helpful in understanding the different packages than the menu you access through the phone dialer.

 

[Zavia]

I moved from telkomsel to xl.
Better gb/$

But if i wanna game with proper latency, telkomsel is needed.

Ive only 3g for now so i dont know about 4g, getting another one next month or so.