Telkomsel, Indonesia's largest mobile operator, has opened a skills-learning platform called Kuncie, where users take short courses taught by named practitioners. The company says it worked with 65 mentors and experts to build the library, and that Kuncie carries more than 550 pieces of practical content, some of it supplied with marketplaces including Tokopedia, Shopee, Bukalapak and Gojek. Kuncie has been live since 7 June but was introduced to the public this month, and the company says it reached 120,000 users by 7 July.

Telkomsel's president director, Hendri Mulya Syam, says the country's talent wants to improve itself but that the resources to support that are still limited, and frames the platform as a way to strengthen the ecosystem around creative workers. Its mentors include the entrepreneur Gita Wirjawan, the director Joko Anwar and the content creator Raditya Dika, and the platform also offers private mentoring sessions that can be booked.

A telecoms company selling skills

Telecoms operators have spent years looking for revenue beyond connectivity, and education is a common place to look: it uses the network, it is sold to the same customers, and it can be priced by subscription. The trade-off is that a learning platform is not a network. Whether it is any good depends on completion, not on sign-ups, and the company publishes the latter — 120,000 users, about 3,000 active on an average day — rather than the former.

A second question is what a course from a well-known mentor is worth to the person taking it. Skills platforms sell access and, often, a certificate; employers buy credentials they recognise. Telkomsel has not said whether Kuncie leads anywhere in particular, or whether the people most in need of new skills can afford it. The platform might genuinely widen access to practical teaching, or it might be a telco product that measures itself in downloads. Only what its users do next will tell the two apart.