Kacific and BigNet bring fast affordable broadband to  Indonesia

15 May 2015

Indonesian Satellite Service Provider, BigNet, has signed a US$78 million, long-term agreement with Kacific Broadband Satellites for the provision of a high-speed broadband service from 2017. Kacific will beam signals from its high throughput (HTS) Ka-band satellites to cover the whole of Indonesia, with a particular emphasis on providing good quality, affordable Internet to rapidly developing areas in Eastern Indonesia.

Indonesia is a vast archipelago comprising over 17,000 Islands. It has the 19th largest land area in the world and is the world’s fourth most populous nation, with more than 250 million inhabitants, around 3.5 percent of the World’s total. While a number of operators provide broadband to the most densely populated areas in Indonesia, the country is developing an ambitious national broadband plan, in which new broadband internet satellite operators like Kacific will play a key role to enable connectivity in secondary cities and villages, whether for schools, government buildings, enterprises and community Internet access points. Thanks to Kacific, BigNet customers will be able to enjoy affordable high speed internet by installing a small (75cm to 1.2m diameter) inexpensive VSAT terminal, even in isolated islands and remote rural locations.

“This is a key milestone for Kacific, and a great promise for Indonesia” said Kacific CEO, Christian Patouraux. “It is the largest proof we have had to the key underlying belief behind the vision of the founders of Kacific: Broadband Internet demand is stifled by the current high prices. Bringing connectivity with disruptively low cost can unlock tremendous untapped demand in the South-East Asian and Pacific countries.”
In large parts of Indonesia today, Internet connectivity, sometimes only available through 2G/3G networks, operates well below the expectations of modern enterprises, government officials and consumers.

“3G/4G is a “best effort” network,’ says Zoel Gandhi, Business Development Director “Service quality is suitable only for general usage: it’s not enterprise quality. The network capacity and performance that many businesses would expect is not as good as you get with a dedicated broadband connection.”

“People living in areas where forestry and fishing are the predominant industries have some buying power, but not enough for most ISPs to make a business case to serve them using fixed line networks. But with Kacific’s HTS service and VSAT terminals on the ground you can have a good network quality at a price that people can afford.”

Kacific and BigNet bring fast affordable broadband to all Indonesians Nicolas Tannady, CEO of BigNet said that the service would open up opportunities for the government and enterprises to provide important services to regions that would otherwise be under-served. “Hospitals and clinics can get advice on the diagnosis and treatment of patients from experts. Students can connect to lessons from the best teachers and access quality resources online. Project execution and emergency planning and disaster recovery programmes will be more effective. The service will also create opportunities for the wider public to do e-commerce and access affordable bandwidth, which can subsequently increase wealth of communities.”

Also attending the signing event, Adnan Batara, Operations and Technology Director for BigNet said that the service could complement the reliability and availability criteria of the Indonesian Palapa Ring campaign in developed areas, at the same time giving equal accessibility to developing regions and closing the gaps between the two.
“We expect to achieve great things in conjunction with BigNet,” said Patouraux. “Their people, like ours, are highly entrepreneurial. And we share a common vision of changing things in a big way. Both companies believe that if you lower the price of broadband sufficiently you will generate demand and create a market where others thought none existed in countries like Indonesia.”

This agreement is the seventh, and largest, that Kacific has signed since it announced 18 months ago its intention to provide a satellite broadband service for the greater Pacific region.