The Nusantara Capital Authority (OIKN) said it's aiming to have the telecoms infrastructure in Indonesia's new capital, Nusantara, operational by August 2024.
As reported by Antara News yesterday (January 15), August has been set as the deadline for the network to be operational.
Nusantara is being built on the island of Borneo, 800 miles away from the current capital Jakarta on the island of Java, which is overcrowded and threatened by climate change.
Indonesia's President Joko Widodo plans to build an entirely new "green" capital by clearing virgin rain forest on Borneo, and has decreed that on 17 August 2024, the role of the capital city will shift to what is currently a vast building site.
From that date, the government is planning to relocate key functions to Nusantara.
"All must be ready and operate in August this year," said deputy for facilities and infrastructure at OIKN, Silvia Halim.
Halim added that the telecoms infrastructure in Nusantara is based on the principle of shared telecom infrastructure.
"The physical (infrastructure) is one, but it can be used by many. Thus, business entities can practice business-to-business with the infrastructure providers that we designated," she said.
During last year's selection process, Halim said that OIKN appointed Telkom Indonesia and PLN Icon Plus to provide joint telecoms infrastructure, including fiber optic networks and cellular base stations in the new capital.
In November, Indosat Ooredoo Hutchison (IOH) confirmed it's developing a 4G LTE network in the future capital.
IOH president and CEO Vikram Sinha said the company has invested around $10 million to deploy 30 to 40 base transceiver stations in Nusantara, on top of the 30 4G sites it already operates in the area.
Egypt is another country poised to build a new capital city, with the location set to be built in the desert 45km east of the current capital Cairo.
Back in 2021, Orange confirmed it would build a new $135 million data center in Egypt’s New Administrative Capital, which has yet to be given a name.
