This is a guest post by Ario Tamat. Ario worked in the digital music industry in Indonesia since 2003, and currently works in the movie and TV industry in Vietnam. Keep up with him on Twitter at @barijoe or his blog on http://barijoe.wordpress.com
In the past few weeks, the issue of theft of phone credits has been making headlines across Indonesian media outlets, with the current developing story being that the Indonesian Telecommunication Regulatory Authority (BRTI) has issued an official letter basically saying that all premium SMS services must be shut down.
To give a bit of background, since 2002, many companies, many of them essentially startups, took advantage of SMS technology and started running premium SMS services in which people who purchased or subscribed to these services would receive the various virtual wares offered by these companies in various forms ranging from ringtones, horoscopes, mobile wallpapers, quizzes to chatting.