Lombok, Indonesia

Lombok, Indonesia: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Lombok is an island in West Nusa Tenggara province, Indonesia, situated in the Lesser Sunda Islands chain. The Lombok Strait separates it from Bali to the west, while the Alas Strait lies between it and Sumbawa to the east. As an island territory, submarine cable connectivity is the primary means by which Lombok integrates into Indonesia's broader digital network.

One submarine cable currently lands at Lombok: the Denpasar-Waingapu Cable Systems. This is an entirely domestic cable, linking multiple points within the Indonesian archipelago and enabling intra-national connectivity across the Lesser Sunda Islands corridor. While Lombok hosts a single cable, its participation in this regional system reflects the ongoing effort to extend submarine cable infrastructure to Indonesia's many island communities beyond the main hubs of Java and Bali.

Cables Landing at Lombok

The Denpasar-Waingapu Cable Systems is a domestic Indonesian submarine cable with a total length of 814 km, reaching ready-for-service (RFS) status in 2019, initially on a draft basis. The cable connects landing points within Indonesia, linking Lombok to other locations along the Lesser Sunda Islands chain. Both endpoints of this cable fall within Indonesia, making it a purely intra-national system designed to strengthen inter-island connectivity across this part of the archipelago.

Regional Context

Across Indonesia, 70 submarine cables serve 139 landing points, with major hubs such as Batam (20 cables), Jakarta (9 cables), and Tanjung Pakis (9 cables) handling the heaviest concentration of international and domestic traffic. Lombok, with one cable, ranks within the top 62 percent of Indonesian landing points by cable count, reflecting a moderate but meaningful position among the country's many island cable termini. It occupies a different tier from the large western Indonesian hubs, serving a more localized inter-island connectivity role in the eastern part of the country.

Network Role

Lombok functions as a single-cable terminus within the Denpasar-Waingapu Cable Systems, supporting intra-Indonesian connectivity along the Lesser Sunda Islands corridor. The 814-km cable links Lombok into a domestic submarine network that extends connectivity eastward from the better-served islands of Bali and Java toward more remote communities in Nusa Tenggara. This role is distinct from that of Indonesia's multi-cable hubs, which aggregate both international and domestic traffic.

As a single-cable landing point within an archipelagic nation of over 130 identified submarine cable termini, Lombok illustrates how Indonesia's cable network extends progressively outward from major western hubs to serve island communities across the full breadth of the archipelago.