Telkom seizes opportunity to make Indonesia a global submarine cable route
The ambition is to position Indonesia not only as a connectivity destination, but as a strategic hub in the Asia Pacific region.
Telkom Indonesia is seizing the opportunity to attract investment by making Indonesian waters one of the world’s alternative submarine cable routes, given the importance of connectivity stability amid geopolitical crises and trade wars.
“The ambition is to position Indonesia not only as a connectivity destination, but as a strategic hub in the Asia Pacific region,” said Telkom Indonesia President Director Dian Siswarini on the sidelines of the opening of Batic 2026 in Nusa Dua, Badung Regency, Bali, on Wednesday.
In her presentation, she explained that through the Indonesia Cable Express (ICE), the state-owned enterprise is translating this strategy through several corridors by strengthening core routes, namely the intra-Asia, Trans-Pacific, and Asia-Europe regions.
Furthermore, the company is also preparing its next expansion into Europe-Middle East and Africa, Trans-Atlantic, and United States-Latin America.
In doing so, she continued, the diversification of submarine cable routes provides certainty and resilience amid an uncertain global situation.
“So the goal is not simply to build more cables, but to create an integrated strategic corridor network that makes Indonesia a stronger gateway between the Asia-Pacific market and the broader global digital economy,” she said.
Meanwhile, Chief Executive Officer of Telin, a subsidiary of the state-owned telecommunications company, Abdul Rahman Ansyori, noted that two global situations present opportunities for Indonesia, particularly as an alternative destination for global submarine cable connectivity.
These global situations are the South China Sea region, including the trade war, and the geopolitical crisis in the Middle East, including tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and the Red Sea.
He explained that when initiating submarine cables, one of which is Bifrost from Manado to the United States, it attracted interest from foreign companies, including those from the United States seeking to avoid the South China Sea route.
Similarly, connectivity for countries in South Asia such as India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh to the United States typically runs through Europe and the Middle East.
However, given the escalation in the Middle East region, Indonesian waters have become an alternative that connects directly to the American continent, including the United States.
“That is what we are currently building through ICE, which connects all these continents so that there is a new alternative route, and we want to make Indonesia a new route that provides resilience for global connectivity,” he said.
This opportunity is believed to attract significant investment to Indonesia, as building submarine cables requires collaboration, including through consortiums.
Indonesia, for example, through the state-owned enterprise, invests approximately 18-20 percent of total annual consolidated revenue in digital infrastructure.
Currently, the company has a fibre optic network spanning 545,011 kilometres, comprising 115,844 kilometres domestically and 429,167 kilometres internationally.
It also operates 34 international submarine cable systems, consisting of 12 consortium submarine cables and 22 wholly owned cables. In addition, there are 297,292 telecommunications transmitter networks, 44,799 towers, and 36 data centres both globally and domestically, as well as three satellites with a total capacity of 42.2 gigabits per second (Gbps).