A handful of Indonesia’s best-known islands are to get a high-bandwidth path onto the world telecommunications network thanks to a new submarine fiber-optic cable that will be laid over the coming months.
The cable, called JaKa2LaDeMa, will link Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Java, Bali and Lombok islands and be operated by Telkom Indonesia. It will be laid and constructed by Germany’s Norddeutsche Seekabelwerke and by Japan’s Fujitsu, which said Tuesday that it had won a US$100 million contract to install the system.
The cable will carry telephone, Internet, video, data and other services and represents the first high-bandwidth connection for the islands, which are major tourist destinations. Broadband Internet connectivity is available in parts of the islands via DSL (digital subscriber line) at speeds of up to 2M bps but most connections are slower.
Construction of the cable system is scheduled for completion by March 2010, said Fujitsu.