Sarmi, Indonesia

Sarmi: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Sarmi is a coastal town and the administrative center of Sarmi Regency, located in the province of Papua, Indonesia. Situated along the northern coast of the island of New Guinea, it serves as a submarine cable landing point within Indonesia's broader marine telecommunications network. One submarine cable lands at Sarmi, connecting it to other points within the Indonesian archipelago.

The cable serving Sarmi is the SMPCS Packet-2, a domestic Indonesian cable that links coastal and island communities across the country. Its presence at Sarmi reflects the extension of Indonesia's submarine cable infrastructure into the eastern reaches of the archipelago, including the Papua region. The corridor enabled by this cable is entirely intra-national, supporting connectivity between Indonesian landing points rather than providing intercontinental links.

Cables Landing at Sarmi

SMPCS Packet-2 is a submarine cable with a total length of 3,498 km, which reached ready-for-service (RFS) status in 2015, with a draft status noted for that designation. The cable connects multiple landing points exclusively within Indonesia, making it a domestic cable serving the country's internal telecommunications needs. With a length of nearly 3,500 km, it spans a significant portion of the Indonesian archipelago, linking communities that would otherwise rely on terrestrial or satellite connections. Sarmi represents one of the eastern endpoints within this domestic cable system.

Regional Context

Within Indonesia's submarine cable landscape, Sarmi is one of 97 landing points spread across the country, which collectively host 40 submarine cables in total. With a single cable landing, Sarmi ranks within the top 64 percent of Indonesian landing points by cable count. Compared to major Indonesian hubs such as Batam, which hosts 15 cables, or Jakarta and Tanjung Pakis, each hosting 7 cables, Sarmi represents a more modest point of presence — yet it contributes to the geographic spread of submarine cable connectivity across the far eastern provinces of the archipelago.

Network Role

Sarmi functions as a single-cable terminus rather than a multi-cable hub, serving as one node in the domestic SMPCS Packet-2 system that runs entirely within Indonesia. Its role is to extend submarine cable connectivity into the Papua region, a geographically remote part of the archipelago where overland infrastructure faces considerable challenges. The cable's 3,498 km length underscores the scale of the domestic network required to serve Indonesia's dispersed island communities.

As a single-cable landing point in a country with 97 such points, Sarmi's position in the Indonesian submarine cable graph illustrates how domestic cable systems are used to bridge the connectivity gap between major western hubs and the more distant eastern provinces of the country.