Don’t want to be beaten by innovation of Sony Ericsson and Universitas Bunda Mulia (UBM)’s M-Campus, Telkomsel and Research in Motion (RIM) Indonesia as principal of BlackBerry announced Mobile Campus for Universitas Pelita Harapan (UPH). The app is developed by Better-B and said only took three months to be completed.
Quite different to what is offered by UBM’s M-Campus — which is bundled with certain product, this UPH’s M-Campus app can be downloaded freely by any UPH student from this link http://uph.better-b.mobi. It supports OS 4.5 as minimum requirement.
As cited from Okezone [link in Indonesian], VP Channel Management Telkomsel, Gideon Edie Purnomo, explained the very reason why Telkomsel is collaborating with RIM for this project is based on consideration that BlackBerry is now the most common smartphones used by Indonesians, especially youngsters. IT Senior Director UPH, Reynier Wayong, strengthened this argument by claiming nearly 90 percent of 10 thousands student in the campus are using BlackBerry.
UPH students may utilize this app to interact in certain academic activities, including: subject subscription (subscription status and fees), academic material downloads, personal academic data access and other academic need (e.g: GPA, achievement graphic, advisors).
Moreover, this app provides information about campus facility, scholarship, tuition fee, campus map, lecturers, and non-academic activities (extracurricular). Not to mention there’s reference for book collection in the library, job vacancy, and homestay/boarding house around the campus.
The Mobile Campus BlackBerry Telkomsel App is a synergy of Telkomsel and RIM, which is the first in Indonesia. Fully customized UPH app is available to ease students on accessing academic information and other academic activities, whenever and wherever. Coming to the announcement are several Telkomsel and RIM executives for Indonesia and Southeast Asia.
Telkomsel admitted the information provided here is still very common, but next year Gideon insists students will be able to pay their tuition using this app. Meanwhile, Telkomsel is still evaluating the impact of this cooperation with UPH and still keep the door widely opened for any possibility to expand similar approach to other universities.
To date, Telkomsel claims the number of BlackBerry users in Indonesia reaches 5 milion subscribers.
