CAPACITY CONNECTION THE BARAT-TIMUR INDONESIA 1 (BTI1) SUBMARINE CABLE SYSTEM by John Maguire INTRODUCTION
As an archipelagic nation comprising more than 17,000 islands, some 10,000 of them inhabited by the population of almost 290 million1, Indonesia is understandably heavily dependent on undersea cable connectivity to carry domestic as well as international telecom traffic. The country is generally well-connected, with more than 50 submarine cables having announced RFS between 2003 and 2025 (of which 23 are international) and another 11 with RFS planned in the future (of which six have an international connection)2. Indonesia’s geography is such that, apart from domestic inter-island systems, it can connect to the key regional economies of Singapore and Malaysia, as well as to neighbours, Timor-Leste and Papua New Guinea—with each of whom it shares an
island—using relatively inexpensive unrepeatered undersea cables. Moreover, as an important market in its own right, and with its massive extent and strategic southeast Asian location, Indonesia also sees significant international cable development activity in and through its waters, especially as an alternative to the currently risky regulatory environment of the South China Sea. Among larger domestic systems planned to be delivered are the BTI1 and BTI2 cables being developed by PT Super Sistem Data (Super Sistem), the former of which is the central subject of this article. Also relevant to our consideration is Super Sistem’s proposed Batam-Singapore cable, SSBS3.
BTI-1 OVERVIEW Barat-Timur Indonesia-1 (BTI1) is a privately owned, high-fibre-count cable system spanning—as its name would suggest4—the breadth of Indonesia. Under development by Super Sistem, it will con-
Figure 1: Screengrab of Indonesia’s domestic and international submarine cables, in service and planned3 1 https://www.worldatlas.com/maps/indonesia
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/indonesia-population/ 2 https://www.submarinecablemap.com/country/indonesia 3 https://supersistem.id/cables/ss-batam-sg/ 4 The Indonesian ‘Barat-Timur’ translates to West-East in English.
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