Jogja Ponsel

Predictably, one question from journalists that Hasnul Suhaimi has to answer repeatedly is what makes him believe that 3G has potential in Indonesia.

The question is not unfair, since the country — with only around 62 million mobile phone users, or less than 28 percent of its total population — now has three major operators offering 3G services.

One of them is XL, which Hasnul now leads. Is there a large enough market for three major players? Who would be willing to pay for 3G’s eventually higher rates once the honeymoon period is over? How can XL recoup its investments in 3G license and infrastructure? These are the likely follow-up questions, of course.

Hasnul — a couple of months ago still at the helm of Indosat who then resigned from that large company — recently joined Telecom Malaysia (TM). This expanding, state-owned company currently has the majority stake in XL, Indonesia’s third-largest nationwide mobile operator.

Hasnul was then assigned to fill the post after the resignation of XL’s former CEO, Christian Manuela de Faria.

Given such outstanding track records during his past tenure at Indosat, Telkomsel and then back at Indosat, it is quite understandable that a lot of people have high hopes for him to accomplish the same level of success in captaining XL.

I caught up with Hasnul at Singapore’s Conrad Hotel just before the joint press announcement by Microsoft, Palm, Celcom and XL on their cooperation in bringing Palm’s Treo 750v to Indonesia and Malaysia.

“Only a small portion of the nation’s need for broadband access and mobility has been met by existing providers so far. We must do something to change it,” he explained.

“Through the launch of our 3G-based mobile broadband services in cities like Jakarta, Medan, Batam, Bandung, Surabaya, Denpasar and recently Yogyakarta, we hope to be able to bring Internet to far more people in this country.”

XL currently has the broadest coverage in Indonesia. It has even gone further by providing HSDPA — the 3.5G service — in around 100 hotspots in Jakarta and some other cities. So, with the 3G and 3.5G services, people will have mobility in addition to just broadband Internet.

Currently, this operator has around 2.8 million subscribers and already 18,000 of them are using the 3G services. But, video calls, mobile TVs and streaming video, which are on the list of “must-have” features at the moment, will not remain hot for very long. We can all foresee it. It is the productivity boost and the real impact on business as well as education that will keep 3G hot until its replacement arrives.

The launch of the Palm 750v, which will be available this month from XL and its Malaysia-based cousin, Celcom, demonstrates how 3G can do just that.

Treo 750v has enhancements galore

The Palm Treo 750v is the second Palm smartphone running on the Microsoft Windows Mobile platform. The “v” has been added to the model number because it is made exclusively for Vodafone.

“We have chosen Vodafone as one of our strategic partners as it is a global player with operations in many countries. Vodafone has also entered into a partnership with Telecom Malaysia, the owner of XL and Celcom,” explained Paul Blinkhorn, Palm’s vice president for Asia Pacific in our interview.

What is so special about the new Windows-based Palm smartphone? Palm has tweaked the user interface, and it has done a great job at that.

Capitalizing on its long experience in developing its own operating system, Palm has introduced a new level of ease of use in the Treo 750v.

Now, suppose you want to call someone or send him a message. With the original Windows for Mobile 5.0, such a task would require a few steps. Using the new Treo, however, it is just a matter of typing in the first few characters of his name. You do not even have to leave the “Today” screen.

Paul also showed me how quickly he can get all the files containing the word “Palm” both on the Treo and on the Web. That is possible as Palm has integrated the search engine in the Internet Explorer Mobile.

If someone calls you and you want to answer with a text message, you can hold the call and start writing the text. No more need to whisper to the caller, “I’m in a meeting right now, I’ll call you later.”

Another feature that I like was the chat-like SMS. Other smartphones let you keep tons of old SMS messages, but they will not be organized according to the senders.

So, if you have to review what the other person said in his earlier messages, you will have to scroll down and find each one of them. In Treo 750v, you can put them in a separate Inbox so you can follow the thread of your past conversation easily.

The Treo 750v is a 3G phone with support for quad-band GSM, GPRS and EDGE. As it is a Windows mobile device, it also supports Microsoft’s push e-mail.

Other push e-mail such as Blackberry and Palm’s own are also supported, so you can get e-mail from various sources. “Once you use push email, you will never want to live without it,” Hasnul said of this feature as the three of us talked about it.

The shortcomings? There are some.

Hardware-wise, the Treo 750v may not be as impressive as the enhancements. True, it has a full QWERTY keypad and the protruding antenna has been disposed of, which makes it easy for you to operate it with one hand. Besides, Palm has clearly designed the hardware buttons around the body with the user’s needs in mind.

However, Treo 750v only has Bluetooth 1.2. It does not support Wi-Fi, which is a bit unforgivable by today’s standards. In addition, although it is a 3G phone, there is no HSDPA to talk about, either.

Its only camera is 1.3 MP. The absence of the second camera means that you cannot make a video call with it. The screen is rather small, as dictated by the compact overall design. It runs on a Samsung 300 MHz processor, while we have seen others with the 400 MHz version.

Yet, if you think these features are not that crucial to your productivity, then the Treo 750v can be a highly recommended choice for its practicality.

Incidentally, one question that Palm fans will certainly ask is whether Palm will go full-steam ahead with Microsoft Windows Mobile platform and abandon Palm.

Paul assured me that that will not happen. “Our objective is to provide our customers with more choice,” he said.

That was good news, as there are already close to 30,000 applications out there that have been developed specifically for the Palm OS.

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