The $1bn challenge to connect Indonesia’s remote communities
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The $1bn-plus challenge to connect Indonesia’s remote communities Written by STUART HODGE Produced by KIRON CHAVDA
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Mora Telematika Indonesia has won two of the three contracts for the Palapa Ring network infrastructure project and it will stop at nothing to increase internet connectivity across the country
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or Mora Telematika Indonesia (Moratel), it’s all about evolution. The telecommunications infrastructure company has seen significant growth in recent years as the demand for broadband, supported by the growth of data consumption and a government push towards digitisation, has increased exponentially in the country. Moratel is now the number two fixed broadband player in the domestic market and as well as providing wholesale connections for telecoms companies, with over 25,000km of optic fiber cable laid down by the company in Indonesia now, it also supplies to most of the active ISPs in Indonesia. The company was recently awarded two contracts for the massive $1bn-plus Palapa Ring network infrastructure project by the Indonesian government. The project is split into three main areas (western, central and eastern region) and with two thirds of the business going Moratel’s way, it is now focused on delivering on the project which will see around 440 cities or regions in three dozen provinces
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Mora Telematika Indonesia’s CTO, Michael McPhail
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across the span of the country as being a leader in the space, but become digitally connected. we’re also recognised as being Moratel’s CTO, Michael McPhail, truly independent. The operators in says the company is passionate about Indonesia have limited sharing on delivering connectivity to some of the any real activities or projects. I think more remote parts of country, but Moratel is seen as being independent, admits that the topographical and and because of that I think people geographical challenges feel more comfortable are considerable. dealing with us. He explains: “We’ve “One of the things won two major projects that they’re all very from the government, aware of is that it’s West Package and East very, very difficult to Package and that’s part get a connection out of that overall broadband to a lot of the remote plan for us to connect areas of the country. The year that different locations and There’s a challenging Mora Telematika areas which have limited business case to build Indonesia fiber infrastructure right that connection which was founded now, so that we can is why it’s supported extend that reach out to by the government.” the remote areas of Indonesia and The Palapa project will connect connect the islands together. For East Java, where 65% of the Indonesian Package, Moratel joined together population lives, through into with Smartfren and Inti Bangun Papua. A mixture of submarine Sejahtera forming a consortium. and inland cable will be used, and “There’s a huge push in microwave connections will also infrastructure deployment in general be needed in Papua because in Indonesia. I think we’re recognised there are certain areas where there
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“I think we’re recognised as being a leader in the space, but we’re also recognised as being truly independent” MICHAEL MCPHAIL CTO, Mora Telematika Indonesia Staff celebrating branch office soft launch
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are no roads, and the only way you can actually build is by flying the infrastructure up there. But this is far from the only logistical challenge, with some of the undersea cables up to 5,000m below sea level and also part of the network passing through the outer edges of the Ring Of Fire, the basin in the Pacific Ocean where large numbers of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions occur. McPhail says: “From a submarine perspective, we have to be careful where we deploy. Some of the companies that are doing the marine surveys for us, who deal with some of the major projects in the world, see this project as one of the most complicated submarine projects they’ve actually witnessed in terms of the number of landing points
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that we have, the geographical as possible internally-managed. conditions that we have to lay the In fact, the only software platform cable across, and also the depth. that was not designed or managed by “And in Papua, we’re building towers their own team was the Oracle suite, to deal with the microwave connection pertaining finances, the rest of the and the only way we can get the company’s entire digital infrastructure material to the location is all Moratel’s own work. is by airlifting. It’s McPhail adds: “As extremely expensive a company, one of and prohibitive, the ways that Moratel which is why the can do to strongly government support compete in the market is important. Basically, is by maintaining the way it works is costs and quality by that we build the keeping in-house as Number of project for them and much as possible. employees at manage for 15 years, “Everything we do, Mora Telematika payment is based in terms of how we Indonesia on the availability manage the team, our of the system.” internal management processes, knowledge FORWARD THINKING managment, HRMS, dashboards, What has allowed Moratel to overcome we’re trying to build everything the environmental challenges and in-house so that we have endestablish itself as a reliable provider to-end management ourselves. of network infrastructure in the “Our IT team is a good example. region, is a desire to stay ahead of We recently built our entire BSS the digital technology curve and stack for our IPTV service which also by keeping as many elements includes automatic ordering and
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“We’re trying to build everything in-house so that we have end-to-end management ourselves” MICHAEL MCPHAIL CTO, Mora Telematika Indonesia
provisioning. On the operations side, we use the network management systems provided by our suppliers but in terms of our CRM solution, our Trouble Ticketing solution, how that gets moved into reporting that’s all developed in-house. “It allows us to be able to control and manage the applications well so that we can customise to what we need to deliver. That gives us an advantage because we maintain a lean and agile approach ensureing our cost in deploying is significantly lower than our competition.” And that is perhaps the key to Moratel’s success, and the company is growing, both in the scope of network provision it is looking to provide and just bare numbers. The company is having to expand
Inside Moratel’s Operations Center at Graha 9
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Loading submarine cable to the Bold Maverick, one of the vessels used to lay on Palapa Ring Barat
Inside a Moratel data centre 16
the workforce to deal with the increasing amount of work it is getting and there are also ambitious plans for a massive expansion in connectivity between Jakarta and Singapore. McPhail concludes: “As an organisation we’re continually evolving and expanding to meet the demands of the work that we’re doing. We’re growing in double-digit numbers every year. “In our Sumatra backbone, with Jakarta and our main connection from Jakarta to Singapore, we have huge upgrades planned for the next year. We’re not talking 10G
connections, we’ll be increasing our connections to a minimum of 100G with increments to over 1T. “What we’ve seen is the consumption of data growing so fast, that means for us to be able to continue to provide for our customers, we’re having to expand our network aggressively, while expanding diversity to increase reslience.”
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PT Mora Telematika Indonesia Grha 9, Jalan Panataran No.9, Proklamasi Jakarta 10320 Indonesia Phone: +6221 3199 8600 Fax: +6221 314 2882 www.moratelindo.co.id