Wakatobi, Indonesia

Wakatobi, Indonesia: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Wakatobi is an archipelago located in the Banda Sea region off the southeastern coast of Sulawesi, forming part of Sulawesi Tenggara province in eastern Indonesia. Administratively consolidated as Wakatobi Regency, the archipelago comprises four main islands — Wangiwangi, Kaledupa, Tomia, and Binongko — whose initials give the territory its name. As an island group situated in the maritime interior of the Indonesian archipelago, Wakatobi represents the kind of geographically dispersed community that domestic submarine cable infrastructure is designed to connect.

One submarine cable lands at Wakatobi: the Indonesia Tengah Cable Systems. This cable connects Wakatobi to other landing points within Indonesia, positioning this location as a node within a domestic inter-island corridor rather than an intercontinental or regional international route.

Cables Landing at Wakatobi

Indonesia Tengah Cable Systems is a domestic submarine cable system with a total length of 2,641 kilometres. It is currently in draft status with a planned ready-for-service date of 2027. All landing points on this cable are located within Indonesia, making it an intra-national system designed to improve connectivity across the Indonesian archipelago. Wakatobi serves as one of the terminals on this cable, linking the Wakatobi island group into the broader domestic submarine cable network that this system will establish upon its completion.

Regional Context

Within Indonesia's submarine cable landscape — which spans 70 cables across 139 landing points — Wakatobi hosts a single cable and ranks in the top 62 percent of Indonesian landing points by cable count. Major Indonesian hubs such as Batam (20 cables), Jakarta (9 cables), and Makassar (6 cables) serve considerably more systems, while Wakatobi's single forthcoming cable reflects its role as a domestic endpoint rather than a regional or international interchange. Nevertheless, its inclusion in the Indonesia Tengah Cable Systems places it among the landing points receiving new domestic infrastructure investment ahead of the cable's 2027 service date.

Network Role

Wakatobi functions as a single-cable terminus within an entirely domestic submarine cable corridor. The Indonesia Tengah Cable Systems, once operational, will extend connectivity to this island group, which is situated in the Banda Sea at a considerable distance from major Indonesian cable hubs. The cable's length of 2,641 kilometres — close to Indonesia's national average of 2,814 kilometres per cable — reflects the geographic scale involved in linking dispersed island communities across the eastern Indonesian seascape.

As a terminus on a draft-status domestic system, Wakatobi currently represents a planned addition to Indonesia's submarine cable graph rather than an established multi-cable hub. Its eventual connection through the Indonesia Tengah Cable Systems will place it within the same national network that serves other Indonesian landing points, reducing the geographic isolation inherent to a remote island regency in the Banda Sea.