In 2021, Indonesia has installed more than 359,000 fiber optics on land and sea, including the Palapa Ring
Jakarta (ANTARA) - The Ministry of Communication and Informatics had accelerated the development of equitably distributed digital infrastructure in the backbone, middle-mile, and last-mile segments throughout 2021.

Minister of Communications and Informatics Johnny G. Plate noted on Tuesday that for the backbone segment, the ministry had currently developed digital infrastructure in the fiber optic networks for the national backbone.

"In 2021, Indonesia has installed more than 359,000 fiber optics on land and sea, including the Palapa Ring," Plate pointed out.

However, the length of the fiber optics installed at this time was not sufficient to connect several points, with the total length reaching 12,083 kilometers.

To this end, Plate said that his ministry and cellular operators will continue to install fiber optics in 2022 to improve the utilization of the national backbone network infrastructure.

"In 2022, we will build 12,000 km of fiber optics to complete nearly 370,000 kilometers of fiber optics installation across land and sea in Indonesia," he revealed.

For the middle-mile segment, the ministry is readying the Republic of Indonesia Raya Satellite (SATRIA-1) that will boost national telecommunications access. The project will be implemented under a public-private partnership (PPP) scheme.

The assembly of the SATRIA-1 satellite was conducted by Thales Alenia Space from France. Meanwhile, the launch will be conducted by US company called SpaceX.

"We expect this satellite to be placed into orbit in the fourth quarter of 2023," Plate remarked.

As for the last-mile segment, the ministry continues to build Base Transceiver Stations (BTS) in villages or sub-districts with blank spots that were not reachable by 4G network.

Plate remarked that out of the 83,000 villages and sub-districts in Indonesia, some 12,548 were located in blank spots.

"To this end, we will continue to build BTS in areas with blank spots. Hopefully, by the end of 2022, all villages and sub-districts with blank spots would have 4G networks," he noted.

Despite intensifying the development of information and communication technology infrastructure, Plate believed a lot of work had yet to be done to minimize digital disparities.

"We still need a lot of BTS and large satellite capacity. We still have to install several fiber optics to complete Indonesia's information and technology communication infrastructure in order to minimize digital disparities," he affirmed.

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Translator: Fathur Rochman, Resinta S
Editor: Sri Haryati
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