For a few hours on Friday, Telkomsel’s homepage was defaced into a black page displaying a warning reminiscent of cult TV show Mr. Robot. The hacker complained that Telkomsel’s internet quota prices were too high and unleashed a profanity-laden demand for lower prices.

“Don’t be too expensive as an operator! How can Indonesia progress if our internet is expensive! Buying food is already hard without the burden of internet quotas. I don’t need [streaming services] HOOQ or Viu. I just need internet. Period,” the hacker wrote on the homepage, under a large logo of worldwide internet vigilante group Anonymous.

Shortly after the hack became publicaly known, Telkomsel issued a swift apology to its customers and those trying to access its site, suggesting alternative ways to contact the operator through GraPARI, its call centers, and the MyTelkomsel app.

Additionally, the company has also expressed gratitude for the criticisms that have sprung up following the incident, seeing the response as a sign of Telkomsel’s market dominance.

“Telkomsel appreciates the public for its criticisms toward our internet quota services. It shows that our service is used at a widespread level,” the operator’s vice president for corporate communications, Adita Irawati, said in a statement just a few hours after the hack.

Currently, the subsidiary of state-owned telecommunications firm PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom) has over 169 million users, with around 50 percent of them connected to its 3G/4G network. Telkomsel is also known to be the operator with the largest area of coverage across the Indonesian archipelago, with around 95 percent of the population covered by its services.

Telkomsel president director Ririek Adriansyah reassured the public that the hack had not affected customer data, as the data was kept in a stand-alone server separated from its website. Telkomsel’s move now is to focus on recovering its website from the hack, he said.

Ririek declined to elaborate whether the operator would meet the hacker’s demands, but he has reported the incident to the police despite the company’s failure to trace the identity of the culprit. “What’s for sure is that we will improve our web security. We plan to review our data packages as well but we must keep them at sustainable prices,” he said on Friday evening.

Commenting on the case, Heru Sutadi, an IT observer and founder of the Indonesian ICT Institute, said the hack and the pricing issue should be treated as separate problems. He argued that Telkomsel’s quota prices should be described as “competitive” rather than “expensive.”

“The main factor is how much a certain customer is able to pay for their internet and what quota packages they choose to buy,” Heru said, adding that it’s hard to determine whose prices are the highest without a proper comparison with the prices of other operators.

A graduate student named Aristya Wismoyo, 24, said he paid Rp 95,000 for 2 GB of 4G data per month with Telkomsel, while a friend of his pays Rp 90,000 for 4 GB plus an additional 8 GB of 4G data per month through an Indosat package.

“The pricing is expensive, I admit, but I still use Telkomsel because I feel it is reliable in terms of coverage. Or maybe I just can’t be bothered to change numbers. It is still frustrating though,” Aristya said when contacted.

Twitter users expressed their opinions regarding the performance of Telkomsel’s, Indosat Ooredoo’s and XL’s data packages, from pricing to downlo ad speeds at certain times of the day. However, no general consensus was reached regarding which operator was the most preferred.

“I shifted internet packages from Telkomsel to Indosat because Telkomsel is expensive! But Indosat’s download speeds tend not to reach the level it should be sometimes,” Twitter user M. Ridwan Taufik (@RidwanTaufik17) said when contacted by The Jakarta Post.

Telkomsel’s standard monthly internet quota rate, named Flash, is priced at Rp 47,000 to Rp 160,000 per month for a quota of between 1 GB and 4 GB. Meanwhile, Indosat offers a Freedom Combo rate of Rp 59,000 to Rp 199,000 per month at sizes between 2 GB and 12 GB. XL on the other hand offers 6 GB and 42 GB for between Rp 59,000 and Rp 239,000.

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