Ketapang, Indonesia

Ketapang: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Ketapang is a town on the delta of the Pawan River in West Kalimantan province, on the island of Borneo, Indonesia. Positioned along the coastline of one of Southeast Asia's largest islands, Ketapang serves as a submarine cable landing point hosting two submarine cables. Both cables connect Indonesian endpoints, establishing Ketapang as a node within Indonesia's domestic submarine cable network rather than an intercontinental gateway.

The two cables landing at Ketapang are JaKa2LaDeMa and the Trans Global Cable System (TGCS). Together they reflect Indonesia's broader reliance on submarine cable infrastructure to link its geographically dispersed island territories, a pattern visible across the country's 139 cable landing points.

Cables Landing at Ketapang

JaKa2LaDeMa is a submarine cable measuring 1,700 km in length, with a ready-for-service (RFS) date of 2010. The cable connects multiple landing points within Indonesia, making it part of the country's domestic inter-island connectivity network. Ketapang is one of the Indonesian endpoints on this system.

Trans Global Cable System (TGCS) is a submarine cable measuring 1,200 km in length, with an RFS date of 2026. Like JaKa2LaDeMa, all endpoints on this cable are located within Indonesia. TGCS represents a newer addition to Ketapang's submarine cable infrastructure, expanding the town's connectivity within the Indonesian domestic cable network upon its completion.

Regional Context

Within Indonesia's submarine cable landscape, Ketapang ranks among the smaller landing points by cable count. Major hubs such as Batam (20 cables), Jakarta (9 cables), and Tanjung Pakis (9 cables) host considerably more systems, while Ketapang's two cables place it in the top 85% of Indonesia's 143 landing points. Its role is therefore more modest and locally oriented compared to the country's leading connectivity centres.

Network Role

Ketapang functions as a domestic terminus within Indonesia's submarine cable graph, with both cables it hosts linking Indonesian landing points to one another. The JaKa2LaDeMa system, operational since 2010, has provided inter-island connectivity for over a decade, while the TGCS, due in 2026, will add a second and more recently engineered cable path to the town's network profile. This makes Ketapang a two-cable node rather than a multi-cable hub.

In the broader context of Indonesia's 70 submarine cables spread across 139 landing points, Ketapang's pair of domestic cables illustrates the role that smaller Bornean coastal towns play in completing the country's intra-archipelago connectivity fabric, ensuring that West Kalimantan is woven into the same submarine cable network that connects Indonesia's other island territories.