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GENERATING GROWTH AGAINST A CHALLENGING BACKDROP

MORATELINDO

Indonesia’s Critical Connector Michael McPhail, CTO of Moratelindo, discusses the path to growth following a challenging year Writer: Sean Galea-Pace | Project Manager: Vivek Valmiki

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gainst the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, many companies are seeking to recover from what has been the most challenging year ever.

However, in the case of Moratelindo, expansion is on the horizon. The Indonesian tech specialist has laid more than 40,000 kilometres of cable over the past few years and has plans to scale that figure to 100,000 within the next three to four years.

Michael McPhail, CTO

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“It’s been a strange year,” admits Michael McPhail, CTO of the company.

“We’ve been fortunate that we haven’t been disrupted as badly as other industries. 2021 for us is about major expansion and I’m looking forward to the future.”

Indeed, Moratelindo is considered one of the largest network access providers in Indonesia. Based in Jakarta, the company is a domestic telecommunications service network operator that runs its business in the field of broadband ecosystems, specifically the internet, data centres, interconnection network leases, domestic and international.

And the firm is in safe hands. With over 20 years of telecoms experience to McPhail’s name, there isn’t much he hasn’t seen since moving into the industry two decades ago. But, his move to Asia happened by chance and so began a chain of events which would eventually lead him to Moratelindo, which he joined in January 2016.

TECHNOLOGY

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MORATELINDO

“I felt there was scope for so much growth at Moratelindo,” explains McPhail. “The company was in a unique position because it’s privately owned and has collaboration with all other players in the market.”

In tandem with his responsibility to oversee the planning and execution of his firm’s planning, engineering, project and operations, McPhail looks after IT where the majority of its applications are developed in-house.

The company adopts the same approach for all project deployment, where it purchases materials itself and manages the fibre infrastructure, while also working on any maintenance internally too. McPhail explains that the reason for this is that it provides Moratelindo greater cost control and can enable the firm to respond quickly to customer issues. For the work that can’t be conducted in-house, Moratelindo has partnered with Cisco, Nokia, Huawei and ZTE. “Managing our spend is vital to us but at the same time we only deal with the best in the market,” explains McPhail.

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KEY SERVICES Moratelindo’s business offering covers: CONNECTIVITY • International Private Leased Circuit (IPLC - SuperNAP) • Domestic Leased Circuit (DLC MetroM) • Local Loop (Inner City) • Dark Fiber • Oxygen.id METRO INTERNET SERVICES • IP Transit International (SuperNET & SuperNET MIX) • IP Transit Domestic (Super IIX) • Internet Exchange (Mora-IXP) • IP-VPN • NET-Hosting • Broadband & Dedicated Internet (Oxygen.id) • Oxygen.id HOME

DATA CENTRE • Rack Colocation • DRC (Disaster Recovery Center) • VPS (Virtual Private Server) • Shared Hosting • Cloud Hosting (Private Cloud & Public Cloud – MORA CLOUD) • Mora Cloud Express Connect (Direct Connect to Azure, AWS, Google Cloud)

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MORATELINDO

A DIVERSE BUSINESS In addition to providing network access, Moratelindo also possesses internationally scaled Data Centres (Nusantra Data Center), which are located in six major cities: Jakarta, Batam, Medan, Surabaya, Palembang and Denpasar. All NDCs are developed with best-in-class operational standards to ensure data security and is supported by multiple network connections.

In 2015, through its Oxygen.id brand, Moratelindo further developed their metro fibre optic network throughout many business district areas to provide high-speed internet access. The Oxygen.id brand delivers services to all types of industries ranging from education, small and medium enterprise, healthcare, hotel, manufacturing, defence, oil and gas, government to media industry. It is now available in over 200 high-rise buildings across Jakarta.

In 2017, the company introduced ‘Fibre To The Home’ (FTTH) service under the brand Oxygen.id Home. The service is an unlimited multimedia entertainment package that can be enjoyed by residential customers. It offers a choice of internet speed packages of up to 100 Mbps and provides 70 local and international cable TV channels to be enjoyed by all.

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“If we invest in the right infrastructure and equipment then it will benefit us in the long-term. The most important point is that we work together in partnership and that we’re constantly reviewing and adapting based on market demands.”

Moratelindo is growing. The number of staff the company employs has increased exponentially and now stands at over 2,000.

And McPhail believes what sets the firm apart is its customer-centric approach. “We really pride ourselves on our ability to deliver not just a new connection as quickly as possible but for it to be best-in-class and that if something does go wrong, we’re on hand to fix it quickly,” he explains.

One of the biggest projects that McPhail has overseen during his tenure has been the major Palapa Ring network, with Moratelindo winning its bids on the East and West regions.

In 2019, Moratelindo successfully completed the project which digitally

TECHNOLOGY

Huawei Upgrades Its Optical Networking 2.0 Solution to Enable Operators’ Business Innovations

Richard Jin spoke at Huawei’s 7th Optical Network Innovation Forum [Shenzhen, China, November 30, 2020] At Huawei’s 7th Optical Network Innovation Forum, Huawei announced to fully upgrade its Optical Networking 2.0 (ON2.0) solution, which features new speed, new sites, new smart O&M, new schema and new service. This solution will fully enable global operators’ service innovations and business growth.

New smart O&M: Smart O&M is realized by building an all-optical Autonomous Driving Network (ADN) by using Huawei’s iMaster NCE-T. At the same time, Huawei’s ASON2.0 solution ensures service “Always On” with 99.999% availability. Huawei’s iMaster NCE-T has been deployed in 130 optical networks of leading operators worldwide.

New speed: Fiber capacity is maximized to achieve optimal cost per bit. The 200G CFP2 solution is a very efficient solution in both backbone and metro scenarios, has become the most-widely-used technology. Huawei’s Super 800G optical module is tunable from 200 Gbit/s to 800 Gbit/s. Thanks to the unique Channel Matching Shaping (CMS) algorithm, it provides the highest spectrum efficiency and 20% more transmission reach, increasing fiber capacity by 40%. The Super C-Band solution provides up to 120 channels and supports smooth evolution to Super C+L.

New schema: Optical networks are extended to the edge to build a stable all-optical metro architecture for next decade, providing ultimate customer experience. By working with leading operators, Huawei has implemented OXC solution on metro networks, extended OTN to CO/SubCO, and deployed OTN CPE in enterprises.

New sites: Sites are simplified to reduce TCO. On the electrical layer, Huawei’s Liquid OTN solution reduces per-site latency by 70%, and supports 100-fold more connections by breaking bandwidth into 2M hard slices. On the optical layer, Huawei’s compact OXC product OSN 9800 P32C fits various scenarios. It reduces footprint by 90% and power consumption by 60%, and eliminates internal fiber connection. Currently, around 1000 OXC products have been deployed across more than 60 global commercial networks.

connects 440 cities or regions in over 30 provinces. The fibre optic network has a total length of 10,710 kilometers and connects Riau, Riau Islands, NTT, NTB, Maluku, Papua and West Papua together.

With the western division completed quickly and efficiently, the eastern ring was far more challenging to complete.

“Our marine surveyors described the western division as one of the most complex submarine cable projects they’ve ever seen,” explains McPhail.

“There was around 6,000 kilometers of submarine cable that passed through tectonic plates and through the outer edges of the Ring of Fire at water depths of five kilometers.”

McPhail explains that one of the hardest tasks with the eastern project was getting the 2,000 kilometers of terrestrial cable laid. “We had to build 52 towers, with over half of them inaccessible by road,” he says. “The only way we could construct it was using helicopters.”

New services: Premium service experience can be enabled by high quality optical connections. The OTN premium private line solution offers differentiated SLA services, helping operators to monetize network in bandwidth on demand (BoD), latency, time to market (TTM), and availability.

Until now, more than 70 optical networks for private line services have been built worldwide. Meanwhile, Huawei also released OTN premium home broadband solution to bring enterprise-class premium experience to home users. This solution is to provide deterministic home service experience through an all-optical gold pipe as well as increasing the ARPU of home users.

In Indonesia continuous construction can meddle with underground cables. “We have to work proactively to make sure our cables aren’t damaged,” affirms McPhail. “there’s no protection or consequence for damage to cables. It’s down to us to protect our infrastructure.”

However, McPhail relishes challenging projects and believes they are the most rewarding. “I love it – I can’t get out of bed without it,” he quips. “I don’t like an easy life.”

McPhail is clearly a man that doesn’t like to stand still. This extends to the adoption of new technology and he recognises the significance of maintaining an agile approach. “We like to be the frontrunners in the market,” he adds. “We constantly monitor what’s happening and if we see something that brings value then we leverage it.”

And monitoring the latest developments has been essential during 2020 as a result of the global

COVID-19 pandemic that has been felt worldwide. But, McPhail is thankful that his organisation responded quickly and positively in the face of adversity.

“The pandemic has been a challenge for everyone,” he admits. “But, to us, the most important thing is our employees.

We must ensure they’re motivated and happy. We’ve tried to adapt and change our culture to do right by them and we currently have a work from home policy because it’s essential that our staff are safe and healthy.”

“The key thing is adaption to change – our team is at the heart of what we do.”

MORATELINDO Phone: +6221 3199 8600 info@moratelindo.co.id www. www.moratelindo.co.id

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MORATELINDO PT MORA TELEMATIKA INDONESIA Grha 9, Jalan Panataran No.9 Proklamasi Jakarta 10320 Indonesia Phone: +6221 3199 8600 Fax: +6221 314 2882 info@moratelindo.co.id www. www.moratelindo.co.id PRODUCED BY APAC OUTLOOK MAGAZINE