Berita

Broadband telecommunication service represents one of the most important aspects for nations which are basing its social and economic lives upon information, through the use of information and communication technologies (ICT) for economic development. Its positive impact on innovation, productivity, trade, employment, foreign investment, economic growth and, consequently a country’s competitiveness, has been widely acknowledged, proved and documented both in the developed and developing countries.

Indonesian government has put its policy on realizing the broadband service throughout the country from cities to villages namely the Indonesia Broadband Plan (IBP) by targeting the village and rural area. In achieving those targets, the Palapa Ring Project (PPP) is initiated as national broadband backbone alongside the similar projects managed by Indonesian operators such as Telkom. The main technology to support the project is optical cable to reach the capitals of district/city due to its abundance capacity, long lifetime and low cost per Mbps.

In the access or last mile side, the solution for broadband services are still open problems, especially in isolated and remote areas, whereas tower-based wireless communication systems and satellite communications are considered to fill the gap but they shall be weighed against the cost effectiveness due the characteristic of the demographic, geographic and purchasing power of the people. Many problems faced by conventional terrestrial solution such as optical cable, mobile cellular and broadband wireless access are the road access and site acquisitions that cause high cost in investment and operation. The satellite solution is a good solution however due to its technological complexity and large footprint coverage area it levies high cost of capital upfront and operation.

An airborne platform therefore is the right solution, as it can overcome the problems of the other solutions mentioned above, particularly to cover the broadband access in villages, rural and remote areas with limited footprint coverage. As defined by ITU (International Telecommunication Union), High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) is an airborne platform operating relatively stationary at an altitude between 20-30 km (stratospheric layer) with up to maximum 500km cell radius and has been discussed and considered for decades for delivering broadband telecommunication access as well as may also support other services such as broadcasting, localization and sensing especially with the increased needs of Artificial Intelligence (AI), 5G services and Internet of Things (IoT). Through proper design and plan HAPS can deliver a high throughput data per cell, a capacity which will serve for sizeable numbers of broadband Internet connections. In case of any immediate demand of communications in rural area or disaster relief, HAPS can be guided and precisely drifted to fulfil such demand in many other locations. Therefore, HAPS should be considered as an alternative for resolving the requirement of broadband access especially in the remote areas and in countries like Indonesia.

Location:

Sari Pan Pacific Hotel
Jln. MH. Thamrin No. 6, Kb. Sirih - Menteng, DKI Jakarta, 10340.
September 25th, 2018.