Indonesia Pushes Internet into Remote Regions as 31,000 Public Sites Get Connected

Indonesia is shifting its digital strategy beyond urban broadband expansion, connecting thousands of schools, clinics and administrative offices in remote regions to turn connectivity into a foundational backbone for public services and local commerce.

BAKTI, short for Badan Aksesibilitas Telekomunikasi dan Informasi, Indonesia’s telecommunications and information accessibility agency, has deployed internet access to more than 31,000 public-service locations. Educational facilities account for 68% of the total, president-director Fadhilah Mathar stated at the BAKTI Media Connect 2026 conference in Jakarta, according to state news agency Antara.

Government administrative offices comprise 19.94% of the connected sites, while healthcare facilities make up 5.89%. Community facilities account for 1.53% of connected sites and include local markets, transport terminals, places of worship, tourist sites and business-service centres.

The distribution underscores a shift in state policy. Alongside investment in consumer broadband speeds in Tier I metropolitan areas, the government is executing a hybrid infrastructure play, leveraging a mix of satellite, fibre-optic and cellular networks to target public institutions across its frontier, outermost and disadvantaged areas, locally designated as ‘3T’ regions.

The heavy lifter in this infrastructure deployment is SATRIA-1, Indonesia’s dedicated 150-Gbps communications satellite. As of early June, it was beaming connectivity to 31,803 locations, including 21,718 schools and 6,353 government offices.

Where terrestrial deployment is viable, BAKTI is leaning on the Palapa Ring, a massive 12,148 km fibre-optic backbone spanning western, central and eastern Indonesia to link 131 network operation centres across 57 regencies and cities.

Cellular infrastructure bridges the remaining gaps on the map. BAKTI has installed 4G base stations and Universal Service Obligation towers at 6,747 underserved locations. Demonstrating the brutal geography and infrastructure constraints of rollout, 3,262 of these sites—nearly half the total—are located in the rugged terrain of Papua. The country’s ministry of communication and digital affairs, or Komdigi (Kementerian Komunikasi dan Digital), specifically identifies difficult geography, infrastructure constraints and security issues, particularly in Papua.

But significant backlogs remain. The government said approximately 2,500 villages lacked internet access at the end of 2025. Meutya Hafid, the minister of communication and digital affairs, has set a target to close this gap by the end of 2026.

Jakarta also aims to improve the quality of existing infrastructure. By 2029, the ministry targets expanding fibre-optic coverage to 90% of sub-districts—up from 72.12% in 2025—while more than doubling fixed-broadband penetration from 20.83% to 50%, with targeted average speeds of 100 Mbps.

The state’s primary hurdle is now shifting from infrastructure deployment to economic utility. BAKTI has prioritised small business integration and service reliability, acknowledging that physical infrastructure plays a key role in generating measurable economic returns.

Ultimately, the real ROI on Indonesia’s digital campaign will not be measured by telecom maps, but by structural changes in rural education, the efficiency of regional healthcare and the integration of village enterprises into the broader digital economy.