State-run telecommunications company Telkom launched its Telkom 1 satellite way back in 1999 and it has since been serving as the backbone for many Indonesian IT services, including 8 of the VSAT providers that coordinate the country’s banking systems. So when Telkom 1 went offline last Friday, it caused some major disruptions.
“On behalf of PT Telkom, we apologize,” said Telkom director Telkom Alex Sinaga at a press conference in Jakarta on Monday as quoted by Kompas.
One of the biggest disruptions caused by the satellite failure is that about 5,700 of the country’s ATMs, the vast majority of them belonging to Bank Central Asia (BCA), went offline. BCA has promised to waive the Rp 7,500 fee that it usually charges customers for withdrawing funds from other banks’ ATMs until all of its services have been restored (which they estimate could take 2-3 weeks). They also said there are still about 12,000 BCA ATMs that are still working.
The Telkom 1 satellite was only designed to last for 15 years but has now been in service for 18 years. After an inspection of the satellite’s functions, Telkom engineers decided that it could be used until 2019. Sixty-three customer companies relied on Telkom 1 for their services, which are currently being rerouted to two more Telkom satellites, but since they are not enough to pick up all of Telkom 1’s transmission volume, the company is also purchasing capacity from foreign satellite owners.
Telkom is estimating that all of its services will be fully operational on September 10.
Reader Interactions