Among the high-profile projects offered is the 10,000 kilometer beneath-the-sea fiber optic cable that will connect Papua with the rest of the country’s broadband telecommunications network.

Indonesia is also offering another project that will directly link the country’s broadband network to Australia.

The projects are estimated to cost Rp 5.5 trillion (US$610.5 million) and up to Rp 2 trillion respectively.

Communications and Information m Technology Minister Tifatul Sembiring said the broadband connection to Papua would be the final phase of an ambitious project to connect all the telecommunication hubs in the country through a 50,000-kilometer-long fiber-optic cable.

“We just managed to build up to Sulawesi,” he said, adding that Papua is the only major island that has yet to have a fiber-optic cable  broadband connection.

Now state telecommunications firm PT Telkom is building 1,500 kilometers of fiber-optic cables connecting Mataram and Kupang worth Rp 800 billion, he said.

Tifatul said the broadband connection to Australia would stretch from Kupang in East Nusa Tenggara to Darwin in Australia’s Northern Territory. The connection will serve as an alternative route to connect to the global telecommunications network.

“Now the only one we have is Jakarta-Singapore-Taiwan-US. If it breaks down we lose all connections,” he said.

The planned Kupang-Darwin connection, he said, “may cost Rp 1 trillion to Rp 2 trillion,” adding that Australian firms will likely be interested in the project.

Tifatul expects that when the broadband projects are completed in 2012 Internet connections will be faster and more reliable answering complaints addressed by users that internet connections in Indonesia are often slow.

He also said the ministry aims to raise the number of mobile phone users to 100 percent of Indonesia’s 230 million population. “Now we have 130 million users,” he said.

In the exhibition, other infrastructure projects offered for this year include those in transportations, roads, ports, airports, energy and housing.

Projects include 2x1,000-megawatt coal-fired power plants in Pemalang, Central Java, which would require between $2.6 and $3.0 billion in investment; coal-transporters and a railway in Central Kalimantan connecting Purukcahu and Bangkuang, requiring between $1 and $1.2 billion; a waste-management power plant in Bandung, West Java, costing $120 to $150 million; and a water supply project in Umbulan, East Java, requiring between $300 and $400 million, to provide water to  cities including Sidoarjo, Pasuruan, Surabaya and Gresik.

The Infrastructure Asia exhibition, held at the Jakarta International Expo in Kemayoran, Jakarta, is supported by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (UNESCAP) in association with the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

The exhibition is held in conjunction with the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on PPPs for infrastructure development, where President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono is scheduled to deliver a speech today.

The conference is expected to result in a joint declaration on infrastructure development by all the attending ministers.

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