Tahuna, Indonesia

Tahuna, Indonesia: Submarine Cable Landing Point

Tahuna is a town on the Sangihe Islands in North Sulawesi province, Indonesia, serving as the capital of Sangihe Islands Regency. Situated in the northernmost part of the Indonesian archipelago, Tahuna's island location makes submarine cable connectivity a meaningful component of its telecommunications infrastructure. One submarine cable lands at Tahuna, connecting it to Indonesia's domestic cable network.

The cable serving Tahuna is the Palapa Ring Middle, a domestic Indonesian submarine cable system that links multiple points within the country. With a total length of approximately 2,100 kilometres and ready for service in 2018, the Palapa Ring Middle system connects Indonesian landing points across the region, enabling inter-island connectivity within the archipelago. Tahuna's position on this cable places it within a broader national network designed to reach island communities across Indonesia.

Cables Landing at Tahuna

The Palapa Ring Middle is the single submarine cable landing at Tahuna. Spanning 2,100 kilometres, the system reached readiness for service in 2018. All endpoints on the Palapa Ring Middle are located within Indonesia, making this an entirely domestic cable system. The cable forms part of Indonesia's Palapa Ring initiative, which was developed to extend submarine cable reach to island communities across the Indonesian archipelago, including those in more remote northern regions such as the Sangihe Islands where Tahuna is located.

Regional Context

Within Indonesia's submarine cable landscape — which encompasses 40 cables across 97 landing points — Tahuna ranks in the upper 64 percent of landing points by cable count. Indonesia's most connected landing points include Batam with 15 cables and Jakarta with 7, while Manado, the major city in North Sulawesi province, hosts 5 cables. Tahuna, with its single domestic cable, represents one of the more modestly served landing points in the Indonesian cable network, reflecting its role as an island community terminus rather than a major international hub.

Network Role

Tahuna functions as a single-cable terminus on the Palapa Ring Middle system, a domestic Indonesian cable that provides inter-island connectivity across the archipelago. Rather than serving as a gateway for international traffic, Tahuna's role is oriented toward integrating the Sangihe Islands into Indonesia's national submarine cable grid. The Palapa Ring Middle's 2018 readiness for service brought Tahuna into a connected chain of Indonesian landing points spanning some 2,100 kilometres of submarine cable infrastructure.

As a single-cable landing point, Tahuna depends entirely on the Palapa Ring Middle for its submarine-based connectivity. In the broader Indonesian submarine cable graph, Tahuna represents the network's reach into remote island communities in the north of the country, illustrating how domestic cable systems extend connectivity beyond the major hubs of Batam, Jakarta, and Manado to outlying island capitals like those in Sangihe Islands Regency.