$2.56 for 30 days of iPad data

On July 14'13, my arrival in Jakarta, Indonesia was an exciting day! I decided to enhance my visit in Indonesia through the purchase of 3G data service for my first generation iPad.

An Indosat sales outlet was near my hotel. Indosat is one of the largest telecommunication firms in Indonesia. The sales person in the central Jakarta sales outlet talked to me about its service. She showed me the following claims that Indosat makes for it's data service for iPads:

micro-sim card
600 MB of data
1 month of service
7 Mbps
5GB free from mid-night to 8 am.

All of this cost me the unbelievably low price of 2.56$CAN or 25,000 rupiahs. This price is nothing compared to the price gouging by Telus and Rogers in Canada! Hell, Rogers, in British Columbia, Canada, proudly advertises a fee of CAN$20 for up to 500 MB of data per month. So I bought the Indosat service for one month during my visit at West Java.

See www.indosat.com/im3 for details.


As soon as the 3g service was available for use on my iPad, I did a speed test. These are the results for Central Jakarta:

A detailed image for this result can be found here:http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/589166906

Test Date: Jul 15, 2013 12:56 PM
Download: 1.17 Mbps
Upload: 0.21 Mbps
Ping: 284 ms
Connection Type: Cellular
Server: Jakarta
Latitude: -6.2539
Longitude: 106.8750
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&q=-6.253889,106.874950

At the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) at Bogor, I did another speed test. Here are the results:

Test Date: Jul 15, 2013 3:07 AM
Download: 0.43 Mbps
Upload: 0.05 Mbps
Ping: 438 ms
Connection Type: Cellular
Server: Jakarta
External IP: 120.168.0.250
Internal IP: 10.236.231.218
Latitude: -6.5527
Longitude: 106.7537
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&q=-6.552656,106.753737

As you can see its speed was just 0.4 to 1 Mbps, not 7.

After one week of use mainly around CIFOR near Bogor, West Java, I found the service to be 1 Mbps or less. Between 3 pm and 9 pm, it did not work half the time. Although Indosat makes big claims which they might not be able to fulfil without fear of consequences, I was still pleased to use it to get me unstuck.

Nevertheless, Indosat could run Goggle Maps. I just had to be patient and wait for slow map generation. During my attempt to travel from Bogor to Ganung Halimun Salak National Park on Sunday, July 21'13, I guided my taxi driver with it after he got lost two times. My iPad was able to get him back on track both times with Goggle Maps. So the service never lived up to its speed claims. But it could provide a valuable mapping service in the cab as we travelled from Bogor towards the mountain park.

Comments

  1. Monika PatelOctober 5, 2013 at 9:50 PM

    Great to know! North American pricing is so overrated compared to the rest of the world.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Larry JosephFebruary 21, 2014 at 1:39 PM

    In January'14, the Dataman app in my ipad found that I used 3.8 GB of data using wi-fi at my village in Canada. None of my data was downloaded with a micro-sim card.

    ReplyDelete

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