No Content, No 3G

Indonesia, which has five 3G operators already, will be the third ASEAN country after Singapore and Malaysia to have WCDMA-based 3G services. We will be joining around fifty million people who already have access to this service around the world.

But it’s not clear what services the operators will offer. When the operators did 3G trials last years, they indicated that their services would be video conferences, video telephony and internet broadband connection only.

According to an Ericsson Consumer Lab survey in Indonesia, video telephony — being able to see the person you are talking with — ranked only fifth in the list of services that users were interested in. Topping the list was radio entertainment, followed by music downloads and mobile television.

Clearly, if high-speed data access or video telephony is not the reason you want to move up to 3G, then it must be the content.

From the Jakarta Post

Interestingly, so far we haven’t heard about official announcements or business agreement on contents development. Moreover, Indonesia has a few content providers only. Have the 3G operators approached them to provide killer content for 3G?

Or rather, I think it’s funny. If there is no content, there is no 3G, right? [3G!]

This post was originally published in Sarapan Ekonomi, Indonesia’s Economy Blog