Tual, Indonesia

Tual: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Tual is a city in Maluku Province, Indonesia, situated within the Kei Islands in the eastern reaches of the Indonesian archipelago. As a submarine cable landing point, Tual connects this island city to the broader national submarine cable network. Three submarine cables land at Tual, making it a multi-cable terminus serving the eastern Indonesian corridor.

All three cables landing at Tual are domestic Indonesian systems, reflecting the country's extensive investment in inter-island connectivity across its vast archipelago. The most prominent of these cables by length is Palapa Ring East, a 6,300 km system that forms part of Indonesia's national ring infrastructure. Together, the cables at Tual facilitate intra-national connectivity linking island communities across the Indonesian island chain.

Cables Landing at Tual

Palapa Ring East is a 6,300 km submarine cable system that reached ready-for-service (RFS) status in 2019. It connects multiple landing points within Indonesia, serving as part of the national Palapa Ring network designed to link the eastern regions of the archipelago to the rest of the country.

SMPCS Packet-2 spans 3,498 km and entered service in 2015. Like Palapa Ring East, its endpoints are entirely within Indonesia, providing domestic inter-island connectivity to the Maluku region, including Tual.

PASELA is a domestic Indonesian submarine cable system currently in draft status. Its full length and ready-for-service date have not yet been confirmed. PASELA connects landing points within Indonesia and, once operational, will add a third active cable link to Tual's submarine cable infrastructure.

Regional Context

Within Indonesia's submarine cable landscape, which spans 70 cables across 139 landing points, Tual ranks in the top 93% of landing points by cable count, hosting 3 cables. This places it well behind major hubs such as Batam (20 cables), Jakarta (9 cables), and Tanjung Pakis (9 cables), but positions it as a meaningful node in the country's eastern island network. Compared to many of Indonesia's smaller landing points, Tual's three-cable count reflects the national priority placed on connecting the Maluku region.

Network Role

Tual functions as a multi-cable domestic terminus, connecting the Kei Islands to broader intra-Indonesian submarine cable routes. All three cables landing here serve national endpoints, meaning Tual's role is squarely within the domestic inter-island corridor rather than any international or intercontinental route. With Palapa Ring East and SMPCS Packet-2 already operational and PASELA in draft, the landing point supports and is set to further expand island-to-island connectivity in eastern Indonesia.

In the regional submarine cable graph, Tual represents an eastern anchor point in a country that depends heavily on submarine cables to bind together more than 17,000 islands, and its three-cable infrastructure positions it as one of the more connected nodes in the Maluku region.