Tua Pejat, Indonesia

Tua Pejat, Indonesia: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Tua Pejat is a town on Sipora Island, part of the Mentawai Islands Regency off the western coast of Sumatra in West Sumatra province, Indonesia. As the administrative seat of the Mentawai Islands Regency, it serves as the principal urban center of this island group. One submarine cable lands at Tua Pejat, connecting it to the Indonesian mainland and providing the island with a dedicated fixed submarine link.

The single cable landing here operates as an intra-national connection, linking Tua Pejat to another point within Indonesia. This positions Tua Pejat as a domestic connectivity node rather than an intercontinental or regional international hub, reflecting the geographic reality of an island administrative center requiring its own dedicated undersea link to the Sumatran mainland.

Cables Landing at Tua Pejat

The Padang-Tua Pejat cable is the sole submarine cable landing at Tua Pejat. Spanning approximately 160 km, it reached ready-for-service status in 2019 on a draft basis. Both endpoints of this cable lie within Indonesia, with Padang on the Sumatran mainland serving as the other terminus. The cable provides a direct undersea connection between the Mentawai Islands and the port city of Padang, the capital of West Sumatra province.

Regional Context

Within Indonesia's submarine cable landscape, Tua Pejat hosts a single cable, placing it among the smaller landing points in a country that counts 139 landing points served by a total of 70 submarine cables. Major Indonesian hubs such as Batam with 20 cables, Jakarta with 9, and Tanjung Pakis with 9 operate at a considerably larger scale. Tua Pejat's role is correspondingly focused, serving local island connectivity rather than anchoring broader international or inter-regional routes.

Network Role

Tua Pejat functions as a single-cable terminus, with the Padang-Tua Pejat cable providing the Mentawai Islands with a dedicated submarine link to the Sumatran mainland. This configuration is characteristic of island administrative centers that require a direct undersea connection to the nearest major coastal city, in this case Padang, rather than participating in longer international cable corridors. The 160 km cable represents a point-to-point domestic link rather than a segment of a larger multi-country system.

Within the Indonesian submarine cable graph, Tua Pejat represents one of many geographically dispersed landing points that extend national connectivity to island communities. Its presence as a distinct landing point in a country with 139 such nodes underscores how Indonesia's archipelagic geography necessitates numerous localized submarine connections, each serving a specific island or island group.