Sungailiat, Indonesia

Sungailiat: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Sungailiat is a town on Bangka Island, within the Bangka-Belitung province of Indonesia, and serves as the regency seat of Bangka Regency. As a coastal settlement, it functions as a submarine cable landing point within Indonesia's broader archipelagic cable network. Two submarine cables make landfall at Sungailiat, both belonging to the Link series of domestic Indonesian cable systems.

Both cables landing at Sungailiat — Link 5 Phase-2 and Link 4 Phase-2 — connect Indonesian endpoints exclusively, placing this landing point firmly within the domestic inter-island connectivity corridor rather than any intercontinental or international route. These two systems collectively represent Sungailiat's role as a node in Indonesia's internal submarine cable infrastructure.

Cables Landing at Sungailiat

Link 5 Phase-2 is a submarine cable system spanning 365 km that reached ready-for-service (RFS) status in 2005, with a draft classification. The cable connects Indonesian endpoints, making it a domestic inter-island link within the Indonesian archipelago.

Link 4 Phase-2 is a submarine cable system with a length of 300 km, also reaching RFS in 2005 and carrying a draft classification. Like its counterpart, this cable connects Indonesian endpoints, forming part of the same generation of domestic cable infrastructure deployed around Sungailiat in the mid-2000s.

Regional Context

Within Indonesia's extensive submarine cable network — which spans 70 cables across 139 landing points — Sungailiat ranks in the top 85% of landing points by cable count. Compared to major Indonesian hubs such as Batam (20 cables), Jakarta (9 cables), and Tanjung Pakis (9 cables), Sungailiat's two cables reflect a more focused, localised connectivity role. Its profile is characteristic of the many smaller landing points distributed across the Indonesian archipelago that serve specific island or regional connectivity needs rather than functioning as national aggregation hubs.

Network Role

Sungailiat operates as a two-cable domestic terminus, with both Link 4 Phase-2 and Link 5 Phase-2 oriented entirely toward intra-Indonesian connectivity. The simultaneous RFS date of 2005 for both systems suggests they were deployed as part of a coordinated effort to extend submarine cable reach to Bangka Island during that period. Rather than serving international or intercontinental traffic, Sungailiat's cables contribute to the inter-island fabric that binds together Indonesia's geographically dispersed territory.

Within the regional submarine cable graph, Sungailiat's presence as a landing point — even with only two cables — illustrates the distributed architecture required to provide connectivity across an archipelago as large and fragmented as Indonesia, where dozens of smaller landing points collectively complement the capacity concentrated at major hubs.