By Blaine Curcio

In early July 2019, Thales Alenia Space—a French/Italian aerospace giant—announced that the company had been awarded a contract to manufacture the “Satria” satellite, a 150 Gbps Ka-band High Throughput Satellite (HTS) to be launched over Indonesia as part of a major governmental universal service obligation (USO) project. The satellite will represent the largest in Asia at the time of launch, and aims to connect over 100,000 public buildings throughout the country of more than 17,000 islands. The Satria project is but the latest effort by Indonesia to use satellite to connect its population, with the country having been a leader in the satcom industry among the developing world for decades.

The Early History of Indonesian Satcom

The first Indonesian satellite was launched all the way back in 1976, with Palapa-A1 being manufactured by Boeing and launched on a Delta rocket. Followed in 1977 by Palapa-A2,  Indonesia’s first two satellites were used to link the archipelago via video broadcast and general telecommunications, at a time when fiber penetration across the region was extremely low. Carrying 12x C-band transponders each, the two satellites represented a major achievement for the country at the time.

The 1980s saw the launch of the Palapa-B series of satellites, which included a miraculous failure of Palapa-B2 to reach its desired orbit, and a subsequent rescue by astronauts, return to earth, refurbishment, and re-launch as Palapa-B2R. Around this time, Indonesia also started to have stronger ambitions to sell satellite capacity to neighboring countries, with the 1980s being a time when few other Southeast Asian nations had their own satellites. With the Palapa-B satellites each having double the capacity of Palapa-A, Indonesia was for a time one of the leading satcom nations in the APAC region.

The Rest of Southeast Asia Catches Up

In the 1990s and 2000s, Indonesia’s satcom market remained vibrant. PT Telkom—a mobile network operator/satellite operator with >50% government ownership—continued to launch the Palapa satellites, re-branded as Telkom, starting with the Telkom-1 satellite launched to replace the Palapa-B series. At this time, PT Telkom gave the rights to the future Palapa satellites to PT Satelindo, a company that later became PT Indosat.

Indosat’s first satellite was the Palapa-C1 satellite, launched in 1996. The company subsequently launched multiple additional satellites, though an investment from Qatari MNO Ooredoo, as well as a strong MNO business, have contributed to Indosat viewing satellite as a tangential business.

As the Indonesian satcom market continued to grow, however, the rest of Southeast Asia started to catch up. The late 1980s and 1990s saw satellite operators spring up in Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and others. While Indonesia remained one of the strongest countries in the region as it pertained to satcom, the country was no longer the one launching the most technologically sophisticated satellites in the region. The massive archipelago remained home to two distinct but related satellite operators, but on the whole, the rest of the region was growing at a faster rate than Indonesia.

Indonesia Leading the Way into the Future

In the 1990s and 2000s, Indonesia’s satcom market remained vibrant. PT Telkom—a mobile network operator/satellite operator with >50% government ownership—continued to launch the Palapa satellites, re-branded as Telkom, starting with the Telkom-1 satellite launched to replace the Palapa-B series. At this time, PT Telkom gave the rights to the future Palapa satellites to PT Satelindo, a company that later became PT Indosat.

Indosat’s first satellite was the Palapa-C1 satellite, launched in 1996. The company subsequently launched multiple additional satellites, though an investment from Qatari MNO Ooredoo, as well as a strong MNO business, have contributed to Indosat viewing satellite as a tangential business.

As the Indonesian satcom market continued to grow, however, the rest of Southeast Asia started to catch up. The late 1980s and 1990s saw satellite operators spring up in Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, and others. While Indonesia remained one of the strongest countries in the region as it pertained to satcom, the country was no longer the one launching the most technologically sophisticated satellites in the region. The massive archipelago remained home to two distinct but related satellite operators, but on the whole, the rest of the region was growing at a faster rate than Indonesia.

Indonesia has been a leader in the satcom sphere among Asian nations for decades. After a period of “losing ground” to the rest of APAC during the 1990s and 2000s, Indonesia today seems primed to again take the lead in satcom, with hundreds of Gbps of capacity planned to be launched over the island nation. While the business models themselves remain uncertain given the current pricing volatility, the capacity will likely be sold, and connectivity likely improved markedly in the process, at a minimum for government employees in remote government offices, and ideally, for the average Indonesian as well.