For Indonesians residing in Malaysia, keeping in touch with friends and family back home can be costly. It gets even more complicated when you travel across the 2 countries. Telin Malaysia, a subsidiary of PT Telkom Indonesia and U Mobile have introduced a first of its kind two in one SIM Card for seamless cross border communication. The SIM is called KartuAs 2 in 1 and it runs on U Mobile as an MVNO along with its parent company, Telkom Indonesia for its service in our neighbouring country.
Essentially this is a Prepaid SIM that holds both Malaysian and Indonesian mobile numbers. Its allows you to make affordable IDD calls to Indonesia and those in Indonesia can call you at local rates to your 2nd number. When you travel between Malaysia and Indonesia, there’s no roaming charges and you get to enjoy low rates like a local. This is like having the benefit of dual-SIM cards and all you’ll need is one card.
The KartuAs 2 in 1 SIM Pack is sold at RM10.60 (inclusive of 6% GST) and it comes preloaded with RM5 and Rp 2,000 credit for each respective numbers. Upon activation, you get 5 minutes of free IDD calls to Indonesiaas well. According to the KartuAs page, they are also offering reload bonuses of RM2 for every RM20 top up, RM3 for RM30 top up and RM5 for RM50 top up.
Calls within Malaysia are charged at 10 sen/30 seconds, while calls to Telkomsel numbers in Indonesia are charged at 9 sen/30 seconds. For non-telkomsel numbers in Indonesia including mobile and fixed line, they are charged at 11 sen/30 seconds. SMS within Malaysia are charged at 5 sen each for U Mobile/Kartuas numbers and 10 sen per SMS to all other networks. Meanwhile international SMS for all countries including Indonesia are charged at 12 sen each.
There are also data plans ranging from RM5/day for 150MB, RM8/week for 250MB, RM15/15 days for 500MB and RM27/month for 1GB of data. If you don’t activate a plan, Kartuas charge a pay as you go rate of 10 sen per 10KB, which is a costly RM10/MB.
This is an interesting proposition for Indonesians working and living in Malaysia and it could even appeal to Malaysian businessmen that travel between the 2 countries a lot. For more info, you can check out the KartuAs page.
