Fakfak, Indonesia

Fakfak: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Fakfak is a town on the Bomberai Peninsula in West Papua Province, Indonesia, serving as the seat of Fakfak Regency. Situated on the eastern fringe of Indonesia's vast archipelago, the town functions as a submarine cable landing point connecting it to the broader domestic network. Two submarine cables land at Fakfak, both belonging to the SMPCS system, which together form an intra-Indonesian corridor linking communities across the archipelago's eastern reaches.

Both cables landing at Fakfak — SMPCS Packet-1 and SMPCS Packet-2 — connect exclusively to other points within Indonesia, making this an entirely domestic landing point. This intra-national routing reflects the practical challenge of providing submarine connectivity across one of the world's most geographically dispersed archipelago nations, where overland or terrestrial links are often impractical between islands.

Cables Landing at Fakfak

SMPCS Packet-2 has a length of 3,498 km and reached its ready-for-service status in 2015. All endpoints of this cable are located within Indonesia, forming a domestic submarine connection along what is one of the longer intra-Indonesian cable routes in the SMPCS system.

SMPCS Packet-1 spans 3,156 km and also entered service in 2015. Like its companion cable, all of its landing points lie within Indonesia. Together, SMPCS Packet-1 and SMPCS Packet-2 were brought into service in the same year, suggesting a coordinated deployment effort to extend submarine connectivity into the eastern Indonesian region that includes Fakfak.

Regional Context

Within Indonesia's submarine cable landscape — which encompasses 70 cables across 139 landing points — Fakfak ranks in the top 85 percent of Indonesian landing points by cable count. Major Indonesian hubs such as Batam (20 cables), Jakarta (9 cables), and Manado (8 cables) host significantly more cables, reflecting their roles as international or high-traffic interchange nodes. Fakfak, by contrast, represents a more focused domestic landing point serving the western Papua region.

Network Role

Fakfak operates as a two-cable domestic terminus rather than a multi-cable international hub. Both cables connecting here link Fakfak to other Indonesian locations, enabling submarine-based connectivity for a town in West Papua that is otherwise geographically remote within the archipelago. The combined reach of SMPCS Packet-1 and SMPCS Packet-2 — totaling over 6,600 km of cable — underscores the distances that must be bridged to integrate eastern Indonesian communities into the national network.

Within Indonesia's broader submarine cable graph, Fakfak illustrates how a country of over 17,000 islands relies on numerous smaller domestic landing points, alongside major international hubs, to maintain connectivity across its full territorial extent.