Timika, Indonesia

Timika: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Timika is a city on the southern coast of Central Papua, Indonesia, serving as the capital of Mimika Regency. As an Indonesian landing point, it sits within one of the most extensively cabled archipelago nations in the world, where 70 submarine cables connect 139 landing points across the country. Two submarine cables make landfall at Timika, linking it into Indonesia's domestic connectivity network.

Both cables landing at Timika connect exclusively to other points within Indonesia, positioning the city as a node in the country's intra-archipelago submarine cable infrastructure. The Palapa Ring East and the SMPCS Packet-2 systems together reflect Indonesia's sustained investment in extending submarine connectivity to its eastern and more remote territories, including Papua. Timika's role in this network is therefore oriented entirely toward domestic inter-island connectivity rather than international or intercontinental links.

Cables Landing at Timika

Palapa Ring East is a submarine cable system spanning 6,300 kilometres, with a ready-for-service date of 2019. This cable connects landing points exclusively within Indonesia, forming part of the broader Palapa Ring initiative designed to extend high-capacity submarine connectivity across the Indonesian archipelago, including its eastern provinces. Timika is one of the landing points served by this system.

SMPCS Packet-2 is a submarine cable system measuring 3,498 kilometres in length, with a ready-for-service date of 2015. Like the Palapa Ring East, it connects landing points within Indonesia only, contributing to the domestic inter-island network that serves coastal communities and provincial centres across the country. Its arrival in Timika predates the Palapa Ring East by four years, making it the earlier of the two systems to bring submarine cable connectivity to the city.

Regional Context

Within Indonesia's landing point landscape, Timika hosts 2 cables, placing it in the top 85 percent of the country's 143 landing points by cable count. Compared to major Indonesian hubs such as Batam (20 cables), Jakarta (9 cables), and Manado (8 cables), Timika serves a more focused domestic connectivity function. Nevertheless, its position as a two-cable landing point distinguishes it from the many single-cable or uncabled coastal locations across the archipelago.

Network Role

Timika functions as a domestic inter-island terminus, with both of its submarine cables operating entirely within Indonesia. The combination of the Palapa Ring East and SMPCS Packet-2 provides the city with two independent system connections, offering a degree of redundancy within the domestic network. This distinguishes Timika from a single-cable terminus and reflects its sustained inclusion in successive phases of Indonesia's intra-archipelago cable development.

Within the broader Indonesian submarine cable graph, Timika represents the extension of domestic cable infrastructure into Central Papua, connecting a southern Papuan coastal city to the wider national network through two separate systems spanning a combined distance of nearly 10,000 kilometres.