Tanjung Pandan, Indonesia

Tanjung Pandan: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Tanjung Pandan is the largest town on the island of Belitung, located in the Indonesian province of Bangka Belitung Islands, where it serves as the capital of Belitung Regency. As an island settlement, its submarine cable connections are the primary means by which Belitung is integrated into Indonesia's broader telecommunications network. Two submarine cables land at Tanjung Pandan, both operating exclusively within Indonesian waters and linking the island to other parts of the archipelago.

The two cables serving Tanjung Pandan — the Tanjung Pandan-Sungai Kakap system and JaSuKa — are domestic in character, connecting Belitung to other Indonesian landing points rather than to international destinations. Together they represent an intra-archipelago corridor, a pattern common across Indonesia's extensive island geography, where submarine cables perform the role of inter-island connectivity rather than intercontinental linking.

Cables Landing at Tanjung Pandan

Tanjung Pandan-Sungai Kakap is a domestic Indonesian submarine cable with a length of 348 km. It was ready for service in 2019 and connects Tanjung Pandan on the island of Belitung to another landing point within Indonesia, Sungai Kakap. The cable operates entirely within Indonesian territorial waters and serves as an inter-island link within the archipelago.

JaSuKa is a domestic Indonesian submarine cable that entered service in 2006. Like the Tanjung Pandan-Sungai Kakap system, it connects exclusively to other Indonesian landing points, reinforcing Tanjung Pandan's role as a node in the country's intra-archipelago cable network. No cable length has been recorded for JaSuKa at this landing point.

Regional Context

Within Indonesia's submarine cable landscape — which spans 70 cables across 139 landing points — Tanjung Pandan ranks in the top 85 percent of landing points by cable count, hosting 2 cables. This places it well behind the country's principal hubs such as Batam (20 cables), Jakarta (9 cables), and Tanjung Pakis (9 cables), but reflects its function as a regional island terminus rather than a major international or national gateway. Its two cables position it comparably to many of Indonesia's smaller island-serving landing points distributed across the archipelago.

Network Role

Tanjung Pandan functions as a dual-cable terminus for the island of Belitung, providing the town and its surrounding regency with redundant submarine cable connections to the Indonesian mainland and adjacent islands. Both cables are domestic in scope, meaning Tanjung Pandan's role is specifically one of intra-archipelago integration rather than participation in international or intercontinental routes. The JaSuKa cable, in service since 2006, established the initial submarine link, while the Tanjung Pandan-Sungai Kakap cable, commissioned in 2019, added a second path and increased the resilience of connectivity for the island.

In the broader Indonesian submarine cable graph, Tanjung Pandan represents a recurring pattern: an island capital connected by short-to-medium range domestic cables that tie remote populations into the national network. Having two cables rather than one distinguishes it from single-cable island termini and provides a degree of path diversity that single-endpoint island nodes lack.