TII Join Submarine Cable Consortium to Support TelkomGroup in Service Provision of Cheap and Affordable Internet

Jakarta, February 17, 2010 – PT. Telekomunikasi Indonesia International (TII), one of the subsidiaries of PT. Telekomunikasi Indonesia, Tbk (TELKOM), has signed an agreement to join a Consortium for Submarine Cable Construction of South-East Asia Japan Cable System (SJC) in Honolulu USA on last January 18, 2010.

This strategic step is as an anticipation to growing high demand of bandwidth worldwide  in year  2010 to year 2014, particularly demand of TelkomGroup.

Bandwidth capacity owned by SJC is huge, even it is claimed as the hugest among the submarine cable existing currently. SKKL (Submarine Cable Communication System) of SJC will connect  Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan and other Asian countries. The Submarine Cable to be installed uses the newest Submarine Cable technology with the capacity to transmit 64 WL (wave length) at each fiber pair and 40 Gbps per WL so that the SJC submarine cable will have design capacity 17 Terabyte per second (Tbps) able to upgrade up to 23 Tbps.

It is planned that SJC will be handled by NEC and Tyco having reputation in the SKKL construction. By using experienced contractor in settling SKKL construction of TelkomGroup, it is expected that construction can be completed on time and that the SKKL constructed is reliable.

Further SJC will be integrated with the SKKL having been owned by TelkomGroup either domestic or international. Domestic SKKL is Jasuka (Jawa-Sumatera-Kalimantan (land & sea), SUB (Surabaya-Ujung Pandang-Banjarmasin) and Jaka2LaDeMa (Jawa-Kalimanatan-Sulawesi-Denpasar-Makasar), while International SKKL is Asia America Gateway (AAG), Batam Singapore Cable System (BSCS), Thailand Indonesia Singapore Cable System (TIS) and Dumai Melaka Cable System (DMCS). By this step, the SJC bandwidth capacity will get connected with domestic infrastructure and fulfill the need of international bandwidth for subscribers in Indonesia.

To complete the SJC network up to North America, the SJC will be connected with other SKKL with the route of Japan-US where there are many systems available such as Unity, Japan-US (JUS) and TGN. Besides, to strengthen domestic and international network, TelkomGroup has planned to construct the SKKL of Jakarta-Singapore 3rd Route.

Now there are 9 members of SJC submarine cable consortium and will probably increase to  11 members from various countries, so that the SJC will have landing point in the countries having strategic positions. This will expand TelkomGroup network coverage worldwide, which in turn will prove TelkomGroup commitment in the global level “The World in Your Hand” to the subscribers of TIME (Telecommunication, Internet, Media and Edutainment) service.

Mulia P Tambunan, President Director of TII stated that, “Huge capacity of SJC is expected to be able to press cost of international bandwidth so that internet service cost will also get cheaper. This will be a supporting factor for improving penetration of the use of broadband internet in Indonesia, which is now still low.”

“Further TII will continuously develop international infrastructure through other routes like west route direction and southern direction (Australia). Including in the infrastructure development is the strengthening of landing point in Indonesia such as Pontianak and Manado. Therefore, increasing and varying demand of broadband for subscribers of TelkomGroup as well as those of Regional will be able to serve”, said Mulia P Tambunan.