REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA -- The government of Indonesia will continue to speed up the development in Papua and West Papua provinces, according to Communication and Informatics Minister Rudiantara.

"Hence, the public will realize that the government is serious about the progress of development in Papua and West Papua," Rudiantara remarked in a media discussion on "Indonesia Centrist Vision: Equality in Papua," here on Monday.

The minister noted that access to the Internet in Papua and West Papua is around 300 kilobytes/second, much slower than that in Jakarta with 7 gigabytes/second. "In addition, the cost of Internet access to Papua and West Papua is 65 percent more expensive compared to Jakarta," the minister noted.

Therefore, Rudiantara added that the government is currently developing the Palapa Ring projects in areas that cannot be reached by telecommunication operators. The Palapa Ring, one of Indonesia's priority infrastructure projects for the 2016-2019 period, aims to accelerate the growth and distribution of telecommunication network across the country.

With an undersea fiber-optic cable network stretching across 13 thousand kilometers and an onshore network of nearly 22 thousand kilometers, the Palapa Ring project is expected to provide high-speed broadband Internet access to the entire people living in urban and rural areas.

According to the minister, the project demonstrates that the government of President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) is serious about establishing cooperation with investors for infrastructure development in the country. The Palapa Ring project -- divided into three sections of west, central, and east Indonesian region -- is the first cooperation in the telecommunication sector under the availability payment method scheme initiated by the Ministry of Finance.

Of the three Palapa optical fiber ring projects, the west section will link areas in the provinces of Riau, Riau Islands, and Natuna Island with total optical fiber cable length of 2,000 kilometers. The central section will cover Kalimantan, Sulawesi, and North Maluku, with an optical fiber cable length of 2.7 thousand kilometers.

The third or east section will cover 35 districts/municipalities in four eastern Indonesian provinces of East Nusa Tenggara, Maluku, West Papua, and Papua. "The east section of Palapa Ring project will have a total optical fiber cable length of 8,454 kilometers with the total value of Rp 5.1 trillion," Rudiantara remarked in Jayapura, Papua, on Thursday.

Rudiantara visited Papua recently to promote the Palapa Ring project's east section to the local government. He underlined that the project aims to meet the public's infrastructure needs in the telecommunications sector, particularly in the eastern region of Indonesia, and to offer faster Internet access to the region.

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