Page 30 - SAMENA ELITE - October-December2025

INDUSTRY UPDATES
30 OCT-DEC 2025
Indonesia’s Surge brings Open RAN into its FWA fold

With a spectrum licence now secured
for Indonesia’s most populated
islands, fibre network operator PT
Solusi Sinergi Digital Tbk, better known
as Surge, is ready to roll out a major
5G fixed wireless access (FWA) net-
work, with Open RAN-focused joint
venture Orex SAI now signed up as
a major supplier of technology and
associated deployment services.

Surge already operates a 6,900km
fibre backbone network across Java
that connects 58 edge cloud data-
centres. It has also rolled out fibre- of Indonesia’s total population – with Surge has been preparing for its FWA
to-the-premises (FTTP) infrastructure a bid of 403.76bn Indonesian rupiahs rollout for about two years, collab-
that reaches more than 1.5 million ($24m). (Java alone is home to 56.1% orating with the likes of Orex SAI,
homes, of which 831,000 (55% take-up of Indonesia’s population.) Huawei, Nokia, Baicells and Fiberhome
rate) have signed up for the com- for the required radio access network
mercial service. It expects to reach Region 1 is home to 45 million house- (RAN) technology and with Qual-
2.5 million premises by the end of this holds, 61% of Indonesia’s total 73.9 mil- comm and Shanghai, China-based
year and have 1.5 million FTTP cus- lion homes, according to Surge (other ASR Microelectronics for the customer
tomers (which would equate to a 60% estimates put the total higher). premises equipment (CPE) wireless
take-up rate). chipsets that will receive the broad-
Region 1 is “Indonesia’s most strate- band signal from the 5G FWA anten-
But only a small part of Indonesia is gic market potential for digital infra- nas.
suitable for fixed-line infrastructure structure… From a household and
due to its terrain: It has a popula- broadband adoption standpoint, this Surge is now ready to begin its com-
tion of more than 280 million people region represents over 60% of the mercial FWA deployment – using
spread across about 6,000 inhabited national broadband potential, mak- space on more than 50,000 existing
islands (the country has a total of ing it the most attractive area for the cell towers from neutral host oper-
more than 17,000 islands), many of deployment of 1.4 GHz BWA services,” ators, such as PT Tower Bersama
which have a topography that makes according to Surge. Infrastructure Tbk (TBIG) and PT Cen-
fibre deployment uneconomic. tratama Telekomunikasi Indonesia Tbk
Currently, Indonesia’s fixed broad- (Centratama) – in areas not set to
So Surge, with the support of the Indo- band penetration is very low (about be reached by FTTP coverage. It also
nesian and Japanese governments, 21%), but it is expected to grow signifi- plans to launch commercial 5G FWA
has developed an Affordable Broad- cantly over the next five years, with services in early 2026 with a 100 Mbit/s
band Project plan, the foundation the national fixed broadband sector service for 100,000 Indonesian rupiahs
of which is a major 5G FWA network forecast to be as large as 40 million ($5.97) per month for unlimited data
rollout. Surge has been working with homes by 2030. usage and free installation and CPE
multiple vendor partners for tests and rental.
trials and now, finally, it has the spec- Surge director Shannedy Ong stated:
trum licence it needed to be able to “Fixed broadband penetration in Indo- The operator recently announced a
push ahead with its plan. nesia is among the lowest in South- strategic partnership with Huawei for
east Asia. Looking ahead, we expect the joint development of the core, RAN
In late October, Indonesia’s Ministry significant growth over the next five and CPE technology needed to reach
of Communication and Digital Affairs years. The trigger point will be FWA, 5 million premises with FWA services,
(Komdigi) announced the results of with a 57% growth rate (2025-30), as well as a multi-year agreement
its 2025 broadband wireless access while FTTH [fibre-to-the-home] will with Qualcomm Technologies for the
(BWA) 1.4 GHz spectrum auction. Surge grow around 10%. Our target market, supply of the Qualcomm Dragonwing
won the prized Region 1 licence – cov- Region 1 (covering Java, Papua and FWA platform solutions (compris-
ering Java, Papua and Maluku, col- Maluku), is a ‘golden zone’ with huge ing modem, RF front-end and Wi-Fi
lectively representing more than 60% potential.” technologies) that will be used in the

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