Open Network Solutions: A Tech Showcase for Indonesia’s New Capital City
In order to meet the communication needs of its future capital city Nusantara, Indonesia’s Authority of the New Capital City (OIKN) has announced a strategic partnership with leading industry players to launch an Open Network Technology Showcase.
Jakarta is currently the world’s fastest sinking city with some parts expected to be fully submerged within the next 30 years. Nusantara, on the island of Borneo, will replace it as Indonesia’s capital, although a timeline for the transition has yet to be established. Work on the ambitious project, estimated to cost in the region of $35 Billion dollars, started in 2022 and is expected to run until 2045.
The technology showcase will involve Telkom University and the Telecom Infra Project (TIP) in collaboration with ecosystem partners Telkomsel, NTT DOCOMO, PT INTI, Edgecore, PLN Icon Plus, and the International Fiber Alliance (IFA). The aim is to achieve significant advancements in 5G, Wi-Fi connectivity and infrastructure sharing solutions that will cater to the new capital’s future connectivity needs, including smart city and advanced industrial applications.
Telkomsel and NTT DOCOMO, through its JV, OREX SAI, will contribute Open RAN 5G SA technology and solutions. These will include several use cases expected to contribute to future network data consumption growth, such as high quality video streaming and smart glasses applications.
PT Inti and Edgecore are providing OpenWiFi Access Point devices with high local content and resources for technical tasks ranging from surveys to commissioning. The TIP incubated technology is an open sourced, community-developed, disaggregated Wi-Fi software system primarily developed for enterprise solutions. It includes a cloud controller SDK and an Enterprise-grade Access Point (AP) firmware, designed and validated to work seamlessly together.
The International Fiber Alliance (IFA) is providing an Open Access solution to enable infrastructure sharing for the fixed broadband network in Nusantara, an increasingly critical aspect of future network planning.
The Ministry of Communications and Informatics (MCI) is providing regulatory support for this initiative and Mulyadi Refdinal, Director of Standardisation at MCI, commented that “by leveraging open network technology, we are not only constructing a robust infrastructure but also fostering an innovative and competitive digital ecosystem.”
An OIKN spokesperson added that “Collaboration with various parties, including the private sector and academics, is crucial for the success of the IKN project.”
Indeed, the flexible and interoperable nature of the open network infrastructure solutions being showcased should provide a strong foundation for Nusantara’s sustainable smart city ambitions, all while facilitating the seamless integration of future innovations.
