Government of the Federated States of Micronesia

FSM Telecom expands services to include wireless

PALIKIR, Pohnpei (FSM Information Service): April 18, 2002 – The FSM Telecommunications (Telecom) Corporation has announced the expansion of its services to include Wireless Services.

In addition to portability and mobility, the services promise to be of great benefit the numerous hard to reach outer islands of the Federated States of Micronesia. The press release from FSM Telecom details the services:

FSM TELECOMMUNICATIONS CORPORATION

Notice to the General Public

FSM Telecom in its continuing effort to meet its vision to provide the best possible modern and cost-effective telecommunications services in FSM is adding, expanding and revising its communication solutions to include:

  1. Wireless services for both Fixed and Mobile services. These new wireless services utilize a very popular and leading worldwide all-digital wireless platform called Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) 900 MHz. These services are new and will soon be widely available in the FSM. Generally, services that will be available from this new wireless network are:

    • Fixed Wireless Terminal: service and equipment that will give customers, who are beyond the reach of existing local landline network and within new wireless network specified cell site, regular telephone services. That is, it offers the same services and functions as your Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) landline services, and in fact, will be treated as one as far as tariffing is concerned. As an example, a customer who is in Parem, Pohnpei may have telephone service as if he or she was in Pohnpei Island proper if he or she subscribes to this service. Or a customer in Nanwolen Rohi, U, where our existing cable network is not present, would also able to subscribe to regular telephone services.

    • Cellular Mobile Phone: service and equipment that will give customers telephone portability, mobility, and more.

    • Short Message Services (SMS): A service that will be available only on cellular mobile phones. Basically, the service allows the cellular mobile phone user to send and receive short message independently of voice calls; a nearly real-time service that stores messages in message centers if the receiving mobile telephone cannot be contacted.

    • Voice Mail Service (VMS): A service that manages calls much like the traditional answering machine with more advance features.

    • Roaming Service: A service where a customer uses his or her cellular mobile phone outside a specified tariffed home zone. Home zone means the island from which the mobile customer purchased the cellular mobile service. A roaming customer may pay additional charges to allow customer’s cellular mobile to roam outside of the customer’s home zone.

    FSM Telecom would like to advise the general public that tariffs (rates) for the services mentioned have been tentatively approved by the Board of Directors on March 29, 2002. Very briefly, there are essentially two basic tariffs that the services entail: (i) Activation fee for both fixed wireless and cellular mobile is $24.00. This is a one-time setup fee. Then (ii) per minute charges to and from the wireless network will be a MAXIMUM of $0.10 (cents) per minute.

  1. In addition to the new services, FSM Telecom has also revised its domestic and Internet leased line circuits in terms of bandwidth availability and new category of tariffs. A highlight for the proposed Internet leased line circuits is the Usage Based Symmetric Internet IP Leased Circuit. This is a new category of tariff and would permit a customer; for example, to pay a minimum monthly fee of $390 for a 64 Kbps dedicated line instead of the usual flat rate of $1,150. Subscriber of Usage Based service will, however, be capped to a maximum of 6750 MB transmit and receive allocation. A $0.06 (cents) per megabyte then applies beyond the capped allocation. The proposed tariffs for these services have also been tentatively approved by the Board of Directors on March 29, 2002.

FSM Telecom would like to inform the general public that it would post details of the proposed tariffs for the stated services by way of local newspaper, cable TV, at public bulletins and at its website www.fm. In addition, copies of the provisional tariffs are available at all FSM Telecom offices.

By virtue of Title 21 Chapter 2 Section 228 of the FSM Code, FSM Telecom would like to invite comments from the general public pertaining to the proposed tariffs. Deadline for accepting comments is April 30, 2002, and may be directed to:

Fredy Shoniber Perman
Marketing Manager
FSM Telecommunications Corporation
P.O. Box 1210
Kolonia, Pohnpei  96941
Phone: 320-2740
Fax: 320-5753
Email: tariffcomments@telecom.fm

Thank You.