Tiakur, Indonesia

Tiakur, Indonesia: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Tiakur is a town in Maluku, Indonesia, serving as the regency seat of Southwest Maluku Regency. Situated in the eastern reaches of the Indonesian archipelago, it functions as a submarine cable landing point connected to Indonesia's domestic cable network. One submarine cable lands at Tiakur, the Palapa Ring East, which links this remote Maluku town to other points across the Indonesian island chain.

The Palapa Ring East cable is a domestic Indonesian system, meaning the connectivity it provides is intra-national rather than intercontinental. For a relatively small administrative center like Tiakur, established as recently as 2008 following the creation of Southwest Maluku Regency, the presence of submarine cable infrastructure represents a meaningful connection to the broader Indonesian national network.

Cables Landing at Tiakur

The Palapa Ring East is the sole submarine cable landing at Tiakur. The cable spans approximately 6,300 kilometres and reached ready-for-service status in 2019. Its route connects multiple landing points entirely within Indonesia, making it a domestic ring system designed to extend network connectivity across the eastern portions of the Indonesian archipelago. Tiakur, as one of the landing points on this cable, is linked to other Indonesian communities and regional hubs served by the same system.

Regional Context

Within Indonesia's submarine cable infrastructure — which encompasses 70 cables across 139 landing points — Tiakur hosts a single cable, placing it in the top 62 percent of Indonesian landing points by cable count. Major Indonesian landing points such as Batam, with 20 cables, and Jakarta and Tanjung Pakis, each with 9 cables, serve as far larger hubs in the national network. Tiakur's profile is more comparable to the many smaller, single-cable landing points distributed across Indonesia's vast island geography.

Network Role

Tiakur functions as a single-cable terminus on the Palapa Ring East system, connecting it to Indonesia's domestic submarine cable network rather than to international routes. Its role is that of a terminal landing point serving a remote administrative center in the Maluku region, rather than a multi-cable interchange or transit hub. The Palapa Ring East's ring architecture means that Tiakur benefits from the redundancy built into that system alongside other Indonesian landing points on the same cable.

In the broader Indonesian submarine cable graph, Tiakur represents the extension of domestic cable connectivity into a geographically dispersed part of the archipelago. Its presence as a landing point illustrates how Indonesia's national cable programmes have reached smaller and more recently established administrative centers in the eastern islands.