Elon Musk’s satellite company Starlink has received permits to operate in Indonesia, a senior official on the Ministry of Communications and Information said on Thursday.
Starlink’s network of low Earth orbit satellites can provide Internet access in distant locations or areas where normal communications infrastructure has been disabled.
Indonesia is an enormous archipelago of greater than 17,000 islands, and Jakarta is working to attach tens of millions more of its population who will not be connected to reliable web services.
Usman Kansong, a senior official on the Ministry of Communications and Information, said Starlink has received approval to operate in Indonesia.
“PT Starlink Service Indonesia has obtained telecommunications business licenses… namely, a VSAT (Very Small Aperture Terminal) Closed Fixed Network Business License and an Internet Service Provider (ISP) Business License,” he said.
The company “now has the appropriate to operate in the supply of telecommunications services” throughout the archipelago, said Usman, director general of the Ministry of Information and Public Communications.
The company’s services will probably be tested this month within the newly planned capital of Nusantara on the island of Borneo, which officials say will open in August. It will then be launched at a later date.
According to some researchers, the Indonesian government is moving the capital from crowded Jakarta, where large areas could possibly be underwater by 2050 on account of rising sea levels and land subsidence.
According to the World Bank, only two-thirds of Indonesia’s greater than 270 million people may have access to the Internet by 2022.
Starlink is now available within the Southeast Asia region, Malaysia and the Philippines.
