Indonesian Political, Business & Finance News

Indonesia ramps up infrastructure with new fiber optic networks

| | Source: TCM
Subsea cables to improve domestic and overseas links

Indonesia is ramping up its submarine network cabling infrastructure with the first quarter of this year by installing two subsea cable projects totalling US$300 million to improve high-speed domestic and overseas network.

Last Saturday, a milestone was reached with the award of a turnkey contract to Japan’s NEC to lay a 4,300 km subsea cable which is being initiated by Fangbian Iskan Corporindo (FIC), Indonesia and Telemedia Pacific (TPI), Hong Kong.

The U$200 million cable is a first direct link that connects Surabaya and Jakarta with Hong Kong which plugs into a world network subsequently. There are options to extend the links to Singapore, Vietnam and Philippines.

The cable link has an initial capacity of 40Gbps transmission speed with a growth path to upgrade to 1.9 Tbps. Based on DWDM optical networking, the cable link is scheduled for completion by end-2011. As a result of earthquake off Taiwan in December 2006, the country’s international connections were disrupted alerting authorities and telcos to the urgent need for an alternative backbone. Its scheduled completion will also be a step forward towards the deadline of 2012 that has been set for the Asean-China Super Corridor optical networks.

A subsidiary of Jawa Post Group, FIC received a principle license as a closed fixed-line provider last year. It will reportedly charge a tariff of about US$400 per megabit per second compared with US$700 megabit per-second under current market costs, according to Bisnis Indonesia.

Indonesia’s Minister of Communication and Informatics, Mohammad Nuh held out the prospect of opportunities for any other investors who are interested in connecting cities in Indonesia or overseas. In other developments, the Indonesian government has reportedly offered to consider opening international backbone telecom links directly with South Korea.
Five islands fiber optic link up

In January, PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia (Telkom) awarded a turkey project to Japan’s Fujitsu and Germany’s Norddeutsche Seekabelwerke NSW for the installation of subsea cable linking Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Java, Bali and Lombok.

The US$100 million project is a first high speed fiber optic link for the islands in the “JaKa2LaDeMa” ring which is due for completion in the first quarter of 2010. It will improve communications tremendously for businesses and residents to benefit from e-commerce, Internet, data, video and voice services.

Fujitsu’s role is to provide terminal equipment, repeaters, branching units and systems integration and related services for the project. Its German counterpart is involved in surveying, cable supply, marine installation and civil works.
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